Eternity was an ocean, endlessly churning, endlessly sprawled in every direction. Jodram Tainer was flotsam in the ocean but he was the ocean. He knew every other speck of mind that had been absorbed into Abeloth's being over endless centuries. In a timeless instant he knew the minds of kings and queens, failed Jedi and vicious Sith, adepts of Force traditions he'd never heard of but suddenly understood, soldiers and politicians and rulers and humble peasants, life-forms of a thousand races from a thousand planets. He was them and they were him and they were all Abeloth.

But Abeloth was more than them. She absorbed their knowledge, their memory, their essence, but there was a hard core that remained unchanged by it all and bent the wills of all the assimilated souls. He understood that core as he understood all the other souls who'd become her. The horrible transformation that had birthed her had come from love. She'd wanted to be like the Father and Son and Daughter, to live like them and be with them forever. She'd wanted to be greater than she was. It was a selfish love but love all the same, and the core of Jodram that remained understood that love and resonated with it. Just as Abeloth- mortal Abeloth as she'd been untold eons ago- had adored the Father and Son and Daughter she'd wanted to be as great and powerful as them, and even knowing she never could she'd striven on and on.

Jodram was not Abeloth. Jade was not the Father and the Skywalkers were not the Ones. Yet there was something he recognized in her longing. There was no sympathy; the core of a Jedi remained and he could never forgive her for the evil she'd selfishly wrought across so many eons. But there was pity for the horrible creature she'd become, desperate and needy and pitiable. There was, beneath pity, resonance.

Perhaps that was why he felt like he was floating near the surface of the ocean that was Abeloth, so close to where her waters met the world. Perhaps it was simple that she still wore body, so freshly consumed. Either way he could sense what was going on outside the ocean. He could see through her eyes that were his eyes, feel touch against the flesh that was his. When she'd reached out to stroke Jade's cheek, so fond, so familiar, he'd felt it all and raged.

It had done nothing. He was trapped beneath the ocean surface and could not break through. Abeloth told his flotsam-self what she'd whispered to him on the Celestial planet, a short time and forever ago: that he was weak, doomed by his very blood not just to remain in his wife's shadow but to be a lodestone dragging her down. That he would always fail the ones he'd loved.

He'd struggled, more angry than ever, but the riptide of souls had dragged him down, far from the surface, trapping him where he could see Jade and Terrid brought into view but not touch them, only rage and watch.

-{}-

When Abeloth summoned, they came. Terrid didn't know what he expected to find on the bridge, but the sight still shocked him. When Abeloth and her fanatic Erath puppets had burst onto Mon Melora they'd slaughtered their way to the command centers, then locked down the rest of the crew and pumped the air from as many compartments as possible. It was quick and brutally efficient, not unlike what the Sith would have done.

Still, the Sith would have cleaned up their mess. When he and Jade stepped into the bridge their faces crinkled in disgust. Bodies in blue Alliance uniforms- human, Mon Cal, a dozen other species- lay on the floor, so many hacked to pieces, surrounded by pools of drying blood. The remaining Erath, probably all that was left of Abeloth's death-cult, had taken the control stations and operations chairs across the bridge. He had no idea how they much they knew about operation a top-line Mon Cal warship, nor how they could ignore the hideous stench of so much death.

Abeloth stood at the center of it all. Starlight gleamed in Jodram Tainer's eyes and a smile, not yet unnaturally wide, showed lines of small sharp teeth.

"Welcome," she told them. "We've almost arrived."

"Where?" asked Jade. She still had the shackles on, just as Terrid still had both lightsabers. It occurred to him that a Jedi with her powers could have probably snapped those cuffs with her mind; she simply hadn't bothered, because she stood nothing to gain by it.

"You will see in just a moment," Abeloth said. She turned, backs to them and face to the great flashing viewport. She lifted her arms as if to embrace what lay ahead.

The ship shuddered violently as it was ripped from hyperspace by a gravity well. A planet surged dead ahead of them, half-eclipsing the stars. It glinted like a metal ball; patterns of light, infinitely complex, spread across its surface and grew especially bright on the half currently swallowed by night. Surrounding it, fainter but visible, were the lights and thrust-trails of hundreds, maybe thousands of ships moving in its orbit.

It was a planet Terrid had never seen with his own eyes, though he'd craved to since he'd heard of it as a child in Chiss space.

Coruscant, at last.

"I tried to take this world once, rule it," Abeloth said musingly. "That was a mistake."

"What are you going to do with it now?" Jade asked, voice trembling.

Jodram's head twisted back to see them, too far to be natural; that awful smile widened. "As I told you, I'm sending a message."

One of the Erath started talking frantically. Terrid peered out the forward view. As they barreled toward Coruscant as quickly as they could several large ships were getting close enough to see in detail. He spotted more Mon Cal heavy cruisers, a few Alliance star destroyers.

The Erath chattered again. When he was done Abeloth spun to face her two captives. "They are hailing, ordering us to stop, even when we've broadcast our identification."

Jade had done something, but she didn't budge, didn't bat an eye. Abeloth stretched out a hand and a ghostly tentacle stretched out from Jodram's palm. Jade gave a cry as it wrapped around her neck, squeezed tight, choked her. Then, just as fast, it threw Jade face-first down to the deck. Her hands, still cuffed in front of her, softened her fall but Terrid heard her head crack hard on the deck.

"You want her intact, don't you?" Terrid snapped.

"Of course." That awful smile widened. "But she needed a lesson."

Terrid held from the urge to help her up. Jade pushed herself to her feet and lifted her arms up to wipe blood from the fresh and bleeding bruise on her forehead. She glanced sidelong at Terrid; she sent him nothing in the Force but her glare said it all. You can stop this.

No he couldn't. All he had were two sabers, nothing powerful enough to stop Abeloth from whatever course of destruction she'd set them on. When Mon Melora got close enough to the other Alliance ships its cannons opened fire as one. The Alliance ships fired back; explosions blossomed on raised shields and the entire deck shuddered so hard Terrid and Jade could barely stand.

The other ships did their best to block the charge but Mon Melora was one of the biggest, finest cruisers the Alliance had produced and it pushed hard and fast through their line. As Coruscant's gleaming metal marble swelled to fill the entire viewport Abeloth pivoted and snapped something in the Erath tongue. Her slaves hurried to comply. She glanced back at Terrid and Jade again, neck twisting too far, and said, "This is my message."

She then stalked over to what must have been a comm station and said, loud and clear, "Greetings, people of Coruscant! I bring you a gift. My name is Jodram Tainer, a knight of the Jedi Order, and I come to bring you vermin what you've long deserved!"

The Erath crewmen shut off the signal; Abeloth spun, full-body, to face the Jedi and the Sith. Terrid's hand went to his belt, to the lightsabers held there. Abeloth's went to the Mortis dagger, still mockingly tied to her waist.

"Why?" Jade's face contorted with anger. Abeloth wasn't just despoiling her husband's body; she was defiling everything he'd ever been. "Why are you doing this?"

"They rejected me once. They pay the price now. You, Jedi, pay the price. The people of the Alliance will never trust you after today."

Terrid watched as Mon Melora pushed through, past Coruscant's orbital defenses. A Golan station swung around to intercept them but the cruiser moved to evade. The cruisers and defense stations pounded their shields to a breaking point but all their laser canons and concussion missiles batteries turned their fire fully downward to fire onto the cityscape below.

Understanding made Terrid tremble. This was what he'd wanted, what he'd told Darth Avanc the One Sith should do. Abeloth was a weapon against the Jedi, he'd said, one who could do more damage than they ever could. She was doing that now. Every missile and laser strike in that crowded ecumenoplis below was taking thousands of lives. The people of the Alliance would never understand and never forgive. All the goodwill the Jedi had gathered from the galaxy over the past two generations was burning before their eyes, burning like the towers of Coruscant. Mon Melora plunged like a knife into the capital world's atmosphere and still kept falling.

"What are you doing?" Terrid snapped. "We're going to crash!"

Abeloth shrugged. "I'd hoped to leave Coruscant with this ship intact. But there are other ways."

"You'll kill us!" Jade said. The deck was shaking so hard she fell against Terrid and they clung to each other to keep upright.

With the flick of a hand, an invisible weight pushed Jade and Terrid both to their knees. The entire deck trembled; even the Erath crewmen were shrieking in terror. The burning city rushed to meet them but Abeloth stepped slowly, purposefully across the bridge. She stopped right before Jade and Terrid, put one hand on the Mortis dagger, then crouched low.

Jodram Tainer's free hand reached out and grabbed Jade's chin in a tight grip. Abeloth tilted her head up, forced her to look into the grinning, monstrous face that had been her husband's.

"Don't worry," Abeloth said lovingly, "I'd never let my family be harmed."

-{}-

Too late. They'd arrived too late.

Despite Allana's warning and the orbital defense Kyrr Esch had hastily thrown together, Mon Melora had cut a savage line through the Alliance ships that had come to block it, then continued onward, firing madly at Coruscant below. The Alliance defenders and the countless civilian ships still over Coruscant were in such disarray it took little effort for Allana's shuttle to weave its way close to the planet.

She strained over the pilot's shoulder to see for herself the horror she couldn't stop. The Alliance ships still attacking its rear had blown out most of Mon Melora's engines but that did nothing to stop its plunge into the planet's gravity well, through its atmosphere, towards the surface that was already burning after heavy bombardment.

"Jade is on that ship," Allana whispered to the Master beside her. "I can feel it."

"And Abeloth?" asked K'Kruhk.

"I can feel immense power. Awful power. Can't you?"

Mournfully, the Whiphid nodded his shaggy head.

Allana had never felt so helpless in her life, not even as a child when she'd watch the man who claimed to be her father wreak havoc in her name. Mon Melora plunged toward the planet and shrunk so small it disappeared from view. Then the bright explosion of impact blossomed and burned in the atmosphere. Allana sucked in breath as she felt the loss of life, probably millions.

"I… don't understand," rasped the apprentice Jedi flying the shuttle. "Did Abeloth… destroy herself?"

"I can still feel her power below," said K'Kruhk. "Can't you?"

"I can," Allana said, and then she felt something else, something impossible and hopeful. "I feel Jade too."

"How can that be?" asked the Whiphid.

"I don't know." She reached out and squeezed the pilot's shoulder. "Take us down there. Please."

The apprentice- just a teenager, all they had left after sending all their knights and masters from Ossus- nodded unsteadily and sent their shuttle in a downward dive, toward the still-burning fires and black smoke that scarred the surface of the planet.

As they dropped into the atmosphere she saw it all. Coruscant was burning. Fires blazed high as mountains, casting pillars of great smoke into the sky. Ash choked the air, blown like curtains of gusts of hot wind. Great towers, miles high, slanted and fell, crashing, spreading more destruction. The world reeked of scorched death beyond measure.

It was all as her vision had shown her, and this time Allana had been unable to stop it.

-{}-

In the awful seconds of Mon Melora's fall Jade had tried to call on the Force to stop its crashing, as she had with that hauler on Fengrine, but this ship was vastly larger and breaking apart around her. She'd tried, nonetheless, to concentrate, to fall into the Force and surrender to it and by surrendering make use of its mighty power, and just as she'd started to feel that strength she'd felt Abeloth's too. That timeless monster had used all her own power, greater than anything any Skywalker had ever known, to throw the warship into the city below.

And, just as its nose smashed into the fight mile-high tower, Abeloth withdrew all her power and used it for a single goal. As the ship and city exploded all around them she raised an invincible bubble around herself, Terrid, and Jade.

Then all Jade knew was fire and light. She squeezed her eyes shut and curled herself into a ball, face against knees, still-bound hands over the back of her head; the best she could do. Everything shook around her so hard she lost consciousness.

When it came back- quicker than it had after the sun blast- she was no longer curled up. She was lying flat on a preserved slab of Mon Melora's bridge deck. Mountains of twisted debris rose on all sides around them; fire rose from the mountains and black smoke rose from the fire. Ash swirled on hot wind, stuck to her sweat-slick face, and caught her eyes.

She wiped them clear as best she could and spun around on unstable legs. She saw Wharn lying face-down five meters away. Equidistant from them both, the last point in the triangle, was Abeloth. Jodram's body stood upright, unharmed by the crash, unbothered by the blazing inferno. Those eyes took in the scene with dispassion: the fire, the smoke, the endless wreckage of a murdered city, the Sith lying half-conscious, barely preserved amidst it all.

Then Jodram's face turned to her and for a fleeting second she felt him. She felt his confusion, his pain, his all-consuming need to do something to save her.

Then Abeloth shoved his presence deep down and it was only her looking through Jodram's eyes.

Jade remembered what her grandfather had said about his love. He'd been able to reach into Abeloth, pull her out, save her from the eternal torture of being alive and helpless within that monstrous being. Something had weakened Abeloth's hold over all her constituent parts, probably the strain of protecting the three of them from the monstrous crash. Even now she was calling on the Force to push away the intense heat of the surrounding inferno that would have otherwise baked them all where they stood. She had power beyond any Jedi or Sith but she still had limits.

Abeloth was back in control now. She walked up to Terrid and, with the flick of a hand, picked him off his stomach and dropped him on his feet. The Chiss wavered but balanced; he looked around at the destruction and his face went slack in shock. She remembered what Wharn had said long ago, about how he longed to see the spires and splendor of Coruscant. It was burning all around him now.

"The message is delivered," Abeloth said. "Now come. We will find a new ship and leave this place, together."

"We're not becoming your family," Jade said. She stepped carefully over the wreckage-strew slice of deck and reached out again for Jodram. She felt him, faintly, still inside Abeloth, still trying to push through to the surface of her weakened awareness.

Abeloth felt it too; she shoved him down again. Terrid straightened himself and stepped closer to her. "Where do you expect to go? How do we get away from all this?"

"I will take us out of the inferno," said Abeloth. "Step away from me and die by fire and smoke."

"We'll never go with you!" Jade shouted.

Jodram's head shook mournfully. "There's no other place for you, Skywalker."

"She's right, Jade," Terrid called.

"Wharn!" Surprised, the name escaped her lips.

"I am not Wharn." His features hardened and he stepped right beside Abeloth.

Exhausted as she was, Abeloth glowed with triumph. "He's right, Skywalker. Come with us and become more than what you are."

Terrid moved fast: one hand plucked his lightsaber from his belt, the other grabbed Jade's and tossed it in the air. He thumbed the trigger on his own weapon and the red blade shot out, straight into Abeloth's side. Jodram's face showed only mildly annoyance and she sidestepped away, not even slowed by the scalding wound that slanted through his ribcage and lungs. She drew the Mortis dagger and swung. It knocked Terrid's blade out of its path and out of his hand. The lightsaber went spinning away. Abeloth darted a step forward and cracked her elbow hard into Terrid's cheek, dropping him, then snapped a knee into his forehead.

By then Jade was inches away. Abeloth swung and caught her attack with the Mortis dagger; Jade's sizzling blade only sparked helplessly against the ancient, Force-empowered weapon. A punch of Force energy took Jade in the stomach and threw her back. She just barely held on as she went skidding across the hot wreckage-strewn deck.

Terrid called his lightsaber to his hand; it flew through the air then turned, suddenly, and smacked into Abeloth's open palm. Jodram's palm. It squeezed to a fist; the lightsaber sparked and crumpled. Still using the Force to pin Jade to the deck she tossed its debris away and looked down at Terrid with casual contempt.

"You would be a fitting vessel for the dark side," Abeloth told him, "But a poor choice for a Son."

She stepped right over Terrid and pinned him to the ground with a boot to the chest. Then she raised the Mortis dagger to kill.

Yet the wound in her side- Jodram's side- burned. It drained Abeloths' power to keep the fatal damage to her Jodram's lungs and stomach away. It drained her further to keep Terrid and Jade pinned, and the keep the terrible fire and heat from the burning city at bay.

Even Abeloth's strength was not infinite. Jodram struggled to break to the surface, even now. Jade could feel him: the man she'd known and loved and trusted nearly all her life, the man who'd fathered her children, who'd been her friend and second half for over twenty years.

She closed her eyes. She forgot about the fire and death and reek of smoke, about the invisible hand pushing her down, even about Abeloth herself. All she thought about was Jodram and the love that bound them. With that love it was easy to surrender to the great power of the Force and by surrendering to gain its awesome strength.

-{}-

Jodram could feel his wife reaching for him through eternity's waters, touching none of it until she touched him. She used every bit of strength she had, as a Jedi, as a Skywalker, as his wife, and used it to pull him forward, pull him out, pull him to the very surface of the ageless eternal aggregate being that was Abeloth. He felt himself pushed as well as pulled, urged on by the endless lives she'd consumed: all the Sith and all the Jedi, kings and queens and apprentices and peasants. They acted as one with all their myriad selves that was one self, urging him to end their endless suffering.

And as he burst from her waters he knew it all: the heat of the fires that burned on all sides, the reek of scorched death, the tickle of drifting ash on his face and the way it choked his lungs.

Life, again.

He looked around with his own eyes and saw the world around him, not just the fire and horror and ruin but Darth Terrid- his friend Wharn- pinned beneath one foot, and Jade lying on her back meters away. She'd propped herself on her elbows to look at him but the rest of her concentration was still in the Force, pulling him outward, willing him to stay himself even as the desperate hard core of Abeloth's being did her best to pull him down. She was shocked that a mere mortal had been able to suppress her and raged to retake control. He realized, finally, the weapon he clasped in both hands. He felt its power and felt Abeloth's sublime terror as she knew he understood.

Terror only made her fight harder. Even Jade's strength couldn't last forever and he felt himself slipping back into the ocean to become one of the nameless helpless souls subject to Abeloth's will. The sensation of ash and heat against his skin dulled; so did the firmness of the dagger in his hands. In seconds she would take him again and finished what she'd begun.

Abeloth had told him he could never save the ones he loved. She was wrong about that.

With both hands he lowered the Mortis dagger until it was level with his chest, then reversed the grip. He plunged it into the softness of his stomach and eternity was over.

-{}-

Terrid felt Abeloth die. The instant the blade pierced flesh it was like an exhalation, far greater than when he'd witnessed the death of Abeloth's other body on the Erath flagship. For a second the entire universe seemed to cry out in agony; then one death was replaced by the exultant scream of a million souls freed from imprisonment. And then, finally, there was nothing but one man.

Terrid knew that Jade had pulled Jodram's awareness to the surface, allowing him to regain control over his own body for a few fleeting seconds. She's seen the twinkle of starlight dwindle from his eyes, replaced by the soul of the man he'd called friend all those years ago.

In coming to himself Jodram had understood everything in one second, and made the only choice he could. The Mortis dagger slipped right below his sternum and all the way through. Its bloody metal point jutted out from Jodram's lower back. The Jedi stepped off Terrid's chest, stumbled, and fell.

Jodram was still alive, barely. His wounds would kill him in minutes but Abeloth was gone from his body. He was himself again. Jade knew it and scrambled across the wreckage and half-fell over her husband. Soot-stained hair spread over his bloody chest and she clasped one hand tight.

Terrid staggered to his feet. Without Abeloth's immense strength the heat from the fires around them was starting to rise. In minutes they'd be scalded. He spun around frantically, looking for some escape, knowing none would come. They would die here in agony but at least they'd killed Abeloth forever; that was something. It had to be.

Then a ship dropped down from above. Terrid felt a gust of air push the encroaching heat away: a gust not only from the ship's downward repulsors but from the Force. The ship sat ten meters over the battlefield but two bodies dropped from it anyway, trailing brown robes as they fell. They landed, Force-assisted and feet-first, on the ground behind Jade. One was a massive Whiphid, tusked and long-furred. The other was a human woman on the far side of middle age, fresh streaks of grey running through red hair that furled in the wind: Allana Solo Djo.

Two new lightsabers sprung to life. Allana dashed for Jade and Jodram. The mighty Whiphid advanced toward Terrid. The Chiss has no weapons to fight with, no strength- physically or in the Force- to match the power emanating from his opponent.

Then a second ship burst into view, coming not over the wall of flames but through it. The sleek black flying wing spun a tight circle around the debris field and slowed to a near-halt. Terrid watched, amazed, as its ventral hatch swung open. As it turned its dorsal side toward Jade and Allana a body half-fell out of it, grasping to the support strut with one hand and reaching out with the other. Even from a distance, Terrid recognized Serissa Lohr.

His eyes darted below the edge of the hovering Intruder. He saw Jade lift her head off Jodram's chest. Blood stained her cheek and hair but she looked straight at Terrid through a curtain of rising ash.

Stay with us, she said, loud and clear.

Stay with the Jedi, to be captured, interrogated, imprisoned perhaps, to be with Jade again and awkwardly rehabilitated by beings who wanted to erase everything he'd become in the past seventeen years.

That was the choice: the one and only choice he'd faced again and again throughout his life. Throw away what he'd become or use what had happened to him- good and bad- to become a better, strong version of what he'd been before.

As there had only ever been one choice, there'd only ever be one answer.

Darth Terrid sprinted for Intruder, using the Force to lengthen his strides. The Whiphid was fast behind him but whoever piloted the Sith ship nudged closer. Terrid threw himself up with one last leap. Both hands stretched out and Serissa grabbed him and pulled him through the hatch.

The ship climbed steeply the moment they tumbled inside. Hot air screamed through the porthole until Terrid used the Force to pull it shut. Inertia still pinned him against Serissa and the back wall but they disentangled themselves from each other.

"A thank you," Serissa said, "Would be appreciated."

"Thank you," Terrid panted. "How did you find me?"

"How could we not?" the Hapan woman said. "What about Abeloth? Is she dead?"

He nodded. "Skywalker did it. And her husband."

"Are they dead?"

"He is. She isn't."

"Pity," she sniffed.

"Who's flying this ship?"

"Who do you think?" Serissa started crawling for the exit portal. Terrid followed, and one after another they pulled themselves into the cockpit. Terrid looked over Darth Kheykid's broad shoulders to see the chaotic space over Coruscant, where civilian, military, and rescue ships all swarmed about, none knowing what had happened or what they could do to alleviate the disaster on the planet below. Intruder slipped effortlessly and unnoticed through the fray.

Terrid clasped the back of Kheykid's seat and asked, "How did you escape the planet?"

"Simple," the Barabel hissed. "I called your apprentice to rescue me."

He looked at Serissa, unable to hide his shock. The Hapan said, "What did you expect? I am Sith, am I not?"

"I believe she is now," Kheykid said.

Terrid nodded. She was Sith. He was Sith, still. What kind of Sith she'd become, what kind of Sith he was now- those were questions.

When they cleared the orbital chaos and Coruscant's gravity well Kheykid brought on the hyperdrives. Light enveloped them and flung them forward, toward whatever answers awaited.

-{}-

The sight of the Sith craft escaping the sky grabbed Jade's attention, but only she felt the body beneath hers retched. Then she pressed her forehead against Jodram's again and cared about nothing but her husband.

She felt his life flowing out from him like the blood that pooled around him. He had just enough strength left to grasp her hand with his, and she felt his grip weakening. Metal blade and lightsaber had torn through lung, stealing his breath and speech, but his bloodied chest heaved beneath hers as it struggled to take in air.

She moved her other hand over the wound and said Enough.

He said, All right.

She shifted her face to kiss him once. Smoke, ash, salt from blood and tears. The trembling stopped and so did his struggling. She tried to fill his last moments with everything they'd had between them: years of apprenticehood, always beside each other; years on Fengrine, building unity and justice and a family; the love that wouldn't pass away but live on through Nat and Kol whatever sons and daughters they bore in turn. He felt that, understood that, and was filled with something she'd rarely felt from him but was so deserved: pride.

Gently, the last of him faded into the Force and was gone.

She picked her head up and realized Allana was crouched beside her, hand on her shoulder.

"I'm so sorry," her cousin whispered.

And through her grief pieced came into place. Her vision of the Throne of Balance, where she and Jodram had protected Allana together, his disappeared the moment Abeloth took possession of his body. In that moment everything had changed. Whether Abeloth's final death had changed things back she didn't know, couldn't know right now, and she held back her desire to tell her cousin all these things. They would wait for another time.

Another figure stepped into view: a hulking old Whiphid, robes and gray fur tussled by the wind. He called, "We must hurry to the ship, please."

"I know," said Jade. "But the Mortis dagger- Where is it?"

They looked around and spotted it laying in front of Jodram's feet. The long metal blade looked different from before. Its hard edges were crumbling, its metal gleam gone. As Jade and Allana crawled over to it they say that the weapon was already breaking apart on its own. It cracked into smaller pieces before their eyes.

It was a weapon that had been made eons ago, perhaps by the Celestials themselves, and imbued with a Force power greater than any Jedi could understand. Whatever purpose it had been made for- to control Abeloth and the Ones, perhaps- it seemed to know when its job was done.

They watched as eternity dissolved into dust and disappeared with the wind. Then K'Kruhk said, "I cannot hold back the heat much longer."

"It's all right." Jade placed a hand on Jodram's face. It felt smooth and looked serene. "Just help me carry him up."