The passageway was almost totally black, with the glitter of mineral deposits and tiny jets of water trickling down the rock walls reflecting the light of distant torches and embers, casting a thin, silvery glow. The only sound was the dripping of the water; Gaya's footsteps seemed to echo on the stone floor as she pulled herself slowly along the hall, trying to avoid slippery patches.

She had no idea where she was going or, if Bane and Cody actually were in trouble, what kind of help she could realistically offer them. But she'd tried to wake Jaina, and that hadn't worked- the girl was too heavy a sleeper- and Ranjana had just muttered something in what was presumably Tusken and rolled over. And Chad…that was just not an option. The last thing she wanted was him walking behind her in a dark passage neither of them knew well.

She was by no means the ideal apprentice for this. But there was no one else, so it was going to have to be her.

She had taken Jaina's lightsaber. She'd left a note on her digipad explaining what had happened. She hoped Jaina wouldn't be too pissed.

She could see what looked like a cave entrance up ahead; it glowed faintly orange with flickering firelight. She pointed her feet toward it.

She was sure there was something behind her. She didn't dare look over her shoulder because…why? She didn't want to admit to herself that she thought it might be an actual possibility? Or she was just afraid that she might actually see something? She tried to listen- maybe Chad had woken up, maybe he was coming- but all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears.

She crouched down and peered ever so slightly around the edge of the opening. Bane and Xiani sat on mats around a low fire. Gaya breathed out. So there Bane was; but where was Cody?

Still, out of curiosity- and because she couldn't yet force herself to vacate the warm corona of light coming from the entrance- she made sure neither woman could easily see her, and leaned in as close as she dared, straining to listen to the conversation over the crackling fire. They appeared to be speaking in Basic, a fact which struck Gaya as narratively convenient but unlikely, until it occurred to her that Xiani might not want other Anzati to hear what she was saying, whereas Bane would not be expecting her apprentices to want to wander through damp, labyrinthine caves in the dark just to eavesdrop on her.

"Are you certain of it?" Xiani was asking uneasily.

"Of course I'm not certain. Any sensible citizen of the galaxy would laugh me out of the room for just considering it. But this stuff…circumstantial evidence, I guess you could call it- it's piling up. I mean, think about it. You people have that one cavern, where you say that a- what was it?- a giant blood-sucking serpent of some kind lives there. How likely is that, though? You say none of the other uzos have experienced anything like it. So considering no one's even seen the thing, isn't it more likely that it's…it? Her?"

"Bane, we must be careful. You must be careful. Do not speak of this to your apprentices. Especially not Linxo." Xiani shifted. "What other 'evidence' have you seen?"

"My tribe had a cave like yours. We were told the evil god Lochi lived there, and that if we disturbed him, he would feed us to his harem of blood-sucking witches. We're…highly inventive with our cautionary tales."

"I thought your tribe were…what is the word? You roam around."

"Nomadic. Yes. But for a few months out of the year, our planet- or at least, where we live- gets these constant sandstorms. So when it gets really bad, we take shelter in this group of caves under Whitesun Peak. We call it Althingard- the place, the season, everything. The Chalahari have caves they use for that, too. You can't live outside for prolonged periods during a sandstorm, even if you seal up your tent completely." She peered into the fire. "But one of those caves- a big one, the deepest one- we couldn't live there. The only ones who'd even visited were our shamans. It was forbidden to go into it without a specific spiritual purpose; there was almost always this big stone rolled over the entrance. It was forbidden to bring in light of any kind. Our shaman Echydna used to say the entrance to the pit of Hell was down there. And there's something else." Both Xiani and Gaya leaned in closer to hear.

In a low voice, as if saying it at all brought her a deep and abiding shame, Bane mumbled, "They used to do human sacrifice down there."

Xiani's narrow eyes became wide, almost mouse-like. "What do you mean?"

"What I said. It was long before my time, I never saw it happening. Before my mother's and grandmother's times, too. I only know about it because before the Empire took me, I was Echydna's apprentice because of my Force-sensitivity, and she told me once. The adults of the tribe never liked to talk about it. They were ashamed." Bane's large arms gesticulated expressively, causing the shadows on the wall and ceiling to dance. "Every few years or so they would take either a boy or a girl- usually it was a boy, I never knew why- and when it got to be winter, and the tribe went up to Althingard, there would be a big celebration to mark the closing of the old year. And after the celebration, the shaman would escort this person- and I don't want you thinking it was a kid; it was always a teenager, or a young adult, they never did it to kids- to the deep cave. The stone would be rolled back, the shaman and the boy would go through- and then a few minutes later, the shaman would come out. Not the boy. And they'd roll the stone back, and that would be that. Except sometimes people claimed there were screams, after the stone was rolled back." Bane shook her head. "Echydna said they would always give the person a lot of alcohol, to lower their awareness, I guess, and to dull…whatever pain they thought there might be. Sometimes…sometimes, she said, they would sort of…feed the person up all through the year. Like they were going to be eaten. The Chalahari did that a lot, she said. They also used more girls than us. Girls are more disposable to them. But they stopped a few years after we did, apparently. We refused to intermarry with them again until they did. No Thar woman wanted that to happen to one of her daughters."

"What made you stop?"

"From what I can tell, it was several things. First of all, it was a bloody practice- and we have some pretty bloody practices, but this was the worst- and nobody felt good about it. Parents were too worried about their kids; the lottery was tainted, there was bribery going on- it wasn't even fair anymore. Plus, this was around the time the settlers started coming over en masse, and it's hard to act indignant about insults like "savage" when you're doing a thing like human sacrifice. Plus, the settlers didn't sacrifice anything, and nothing was happening to them. So the tribe voted and got it stopped. For a few years, they would hold an annual vote about whether to start it again, but they even stopped that because it was so pointless- it was always a pretty unanimous no.

"But that's what all the stuff in the Jedi Temple made me think of. All those bones- especially that pile of skulls. They were swept into this neat pile- it was almost geometric. Very ritualistic. And it was so dark- the lower levels weren't so bad, because the emergency lighting still worked fairly well- but the main level, the upper levels…all the lighting had been sabotaged. Purposefully. And all the windows on the main levels had these thick blackout curtains. Newer curtains, and well-maintained. As if they'd been kept up. So that light couldn't enter those parts of the Temple. It made me think of the deep cave at Althingard."

"Do you believe that the…entity that we may have here is the same type your people appeased? Why would a thing like that care about this Temple?"

"I don't know. I mean, I guess Coruscant really doesn't have any deep, unexplored spaces underground anymore, so if you wanted a big, vacant place to dwell, that would definitely be a place. But then I guess the question becomes, why would this thing want to come to Coruscant?"

"Could it be a…Sith thing?" Xiani voiced the question tentatively, as if hoping she was wrong.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because…you know we were once invaded by the Sith, when they were under the command of the one they called Darth Bane, before, it is said, she smashed her own empire and the Sith disappeared. We were…terrified of Bane, although she was not so harsh with us as she was in her later conquests. Her own men were terrified of her as well. You could tell. And there were rumors…they said she did things with the Force that could not be done. But we were frightened because we had never met a human who was…like us. Who could do with her mind what we can.

"Down in the valley, there are uzot that believe her essence never died. That she is still in this universe. That she is stronger than death. It's one of the reasons we were so suspicious of you at first. You were a human and an outsider bearing her name."

"So Bane the First WAS a female!" Bane pumped a fist in the air. "YES!"

"Hush! You will wake someone!" hissed Xiani. "I want none of my clan to learn of this theory. They would panic."

"Sorry. It's just that we just discovered all these old diaries in an archaeological dig on Korriban, and they seem to suggest pretty conclusively that she was, but we've had all this resistance from these male Sith enthusiasts who used to work under the Emperor, because they say that since on average women are weaker than men, there were no women Sith. If your uzo memory banks are as good as I think they are, those sexist bastards can suck it."

Xiani threw up her hands. "I am telling you that a long-dead Sith may be roaming our land, and that is the piece of information that makes the greatest impression on you? What gender she was?"

"You don't understand. Gender is a big thing out there. Almost bigger than sexual orientation, even species orientation. Our genders are assigned by nature, so gender roles are fluid for us. Here, you guys have men fighting and hunting because that's generally their specialty, and you have the women doing the childcare and diplomacy and political stuff because that's what they tend to be good at. And people choose which one they want, so it's okay. It's not like that for us. You wouldn't believe some of the crap our own Republic's statesmen have spewed, let alone what the Empire used to say."

"Listen, Bane, you say the Empire guarded that Temple until your battle at Endor," said Xiani, apparently trying to get things back on track. "You knew its soldiers. What did they say about it?"

"Come to think of it, there were some rumors. I know that Temple patrols were thought of as a really crappy assignment. Troopers would rather work Nar Shadaa than the Temple. And that always struck me as weird, because it's guarding an abandoned building in one of the most advanced cities in the galaxy. You'd think that would be cushy. But they said it was given to people the Emperor wanted to make disappear. But nobody would really tell me about it. Not even Lord Vader. He hated for me to bring it up." She didn't like to think of those memories; Vader had been a fearsome person to have angry at you, but beyond that…while she was in the Emperor's court, Vader had become her teacher, and her rock. He had lost his wife and child in the Clone War (or so she'd thought at the time), and her own family was either far away or about as affectionate as a duracrete wall. In a sense, they had adopted each other, and deep down the idea of Lord Vader being frightened of anything still bothered Bane. "I know at one point they tried to have administrative offices there. It didn't work."

The silence grew loud with the hiss and pop of the fire. Finally, Xiani said softly, "What can I tell my people?"

"I don't know. Maybe nothing yet. Not 'til we know more. I have to get back to the Core so I can contact my tribe and grill Echydna for what she knows. I need to have a look at some Sith volumes. Some files from the Temple we recovered, maybe. I'll tell you everything I know as soon as I know it. But you know, I'm not sure there's much urgency. This entity, whoever it is, hasn't made much of a move for centuries. I can't think why it would change its policy now- unless…oh gods."

"What?"

"He was appeasing it! Maybe. The Emperor. That's what those temple patrols were for, especially the one young Cody described to me. And now that he's stopped…still, there's nothing we can do yet. We have to wait for the other shoe to fall. Hell, we have to wait for the first shoe to fall." She rattled off a string of Tusken. "That's an expression we have. Basically, it means, 'we'll know what is going on when it blows up in our faces.' Of course, that's not a direct translation."

"Should I move us?"

"I don't know that there's much point. It can probably hunt you down if it wants. I wouldn't tell people about this. If it's nothing, and we tell them, they'll be panicking for no reason. If it's really bad, and we tell them, they'll still be panicking for no reason because if it's that bad, there's probably nothing we can do."

"Perhaps I should send a male with Linxo. So that, if something does happen, together they can preserve-"

"Don't get crazy on me, Xiani. This is not going to be the end of the Anzati people. It's not even going to be the end of this uzo. You weathered the Bane the First invasion and you'll weather this too." She yawned and stretched like some sort of feline. "There's nothing we can do tonight. Tomorrow, when it's daylight, I'll light a torch and check things out down there. In the meantime, I for one am going to get some sleep."

Gaya gasped. Feeling almost paralyzed with the dread of being discovered, she forced herself to move- to stumble, and then to run, back down the passage. She thought Bane might have seen her; she couldn't be sure whether or not the New Sith Master had called out to her retreating back.

The tunnel grew steep beneath her feet, slanting down like a ramp before evolving into some narrow, rough-hewn stairs, all before Gaya even noticed the difference. It didn't occur to her until she was already falling that this was not the passage she had come from.