In the shady dusk of the Jedi Temple's Situation Room, Mace Windu presses his hands to the central holotable and lowers his head. A soft, stifled exhale. Half-closed eyes. Firmly-pressed lips. "We are talking about a major offensive against a Separatist stronghold," he says, his words slipping through clenched teeth. "A fortress world defended by General Grievous, no less, and against a fleet that has already destroyed one of our own recently. It's not worth it."

Obi-Wan runs his thumb through his beard. After three hours interrogating the prisoner Anakin and Ahsoka retrieved from Sleheyron, the Council has actionable intelligence on the Taths and their connection to the Separatists. A hidden Tath stronghold on Thyferra running goods, credits, and contraband—and perhaps that contraband just so includes Sith artifacts—between Separatist, Republic, and non-aligned space. But Thyferra, the production center for the galaxy's miracle medicine bacta, is hardly an easy target. Anti-ship cannons and whole armies stand ready on the world's forested surface, turbolaser-bristling orbital stations lie in wait for attackers, and a whole Confederate armada—headed by General Grievous no less, the same armada that wiped out Master Taron Malicos's forces over Teyr—looms in local space to challenge any Republic assault. Master Windu is correct: Only a major offensive has any hope of breaching Thyferra's defenses.

Fortunately, that is exactly what is building right now in orbit over nearby Fondor, a Republic shipyard nexus and stronghold of its own merit. "We've been holding the Fondor-Thyferra line for over a year," Obi-Wan says. "The Separatists have mounted attack after attack for months now, and our own offensives have gone nowhere. We're losing this war, Master. We are desperate for a victory. Whether Anakin's intelligence and the testimony of the prisoner he picked up on Sleheyron prove accurate, what do we have to lose?"

"Quite a bit. If the Fondor fleet collapses in a failed attack, the whole Core is exposed from the galactic South."

"And if we continue to sit on the defensive, the Separatists will pick us apart system by system until we have Coruscant and nothing else."

The third member of their impromptu war council stands by quietly in holographic form. Master Luminara Unduli clears her throat and says, "Master Windu, every scouting report has returned the same information: Since the battle over Teyr, the Separatists have made no move towards Fondor. Or anywhere. Perhaps they are waiting for us to make a move, but it's equally as likely that General Grievous is using his fleet over Thyferra as a fixing force to keep us from redeploying elsewhere. So long as Thyferra remains defended and Fondor remains vulnerable, we are at a disadvantage."

Master Windu frowns and closes his eyes. Obi-Wan understands his frustration: The last few months of the Clone Wars have taken a downward turn for the Republic, and the recent chaos at Taris has only made things worse. The Separatists are gaining ground too quickly, picking up unlikely allies and seizing worlds as they make inroad after inroad towards the Core. The Republic cannot afford to let the droid armies kill them with a thousand cuts. But nor can they allow one wrong-headed, overly-aggressive action open up a hole in their lines.

But the Holonet has raged with fury over the Republic's defeats. The Jedi themselves have faced popular backlash for their inability to stem the Confederate onslaught, and cagey, politically-minded Republic naval officers have used the public's unrest to suggest that more and more military functions be taken from the Jedi's hands and ceded to the Senate and the Chancellor. None of them have the luxury of waiting for a better time to strike. The sun is sinking fast on the Jedi Order's chances. "What's the status of your fleet, Luminara?" Windu asks.

"Admiral Tarkin and I rarely see eye-to-eye," Luminara says, clasping her hands behind her back and taking a dignified pose, "but he is undoubtably a capable fleet commander. With Master Kenobi's armada added to our own, I have no doubt that we have the numbers to storm Thyferra. Whether or not that results in victory…"

"…is for the will of the Force to decide," murmurs Windu. He takes a deep breath and looks to Obi-Wan. "Do you think Skywalker can find anything on Thyferra? Connected to the Taths or not…we can't afford to have a situation like Taris's fall occur again. Not in the Neutral Systems, not anywhere. Especially not with what you found out on Tatooine concerning Maul."

Obi-Wan purses his lips. Mandalore on the brink. Death Watch's power intensifying. And at the center, Satine is just as vulnerable as they are. If the Taths are consolidating the Neutral Systems, the next logical target after Taris is Mandalore. And Obi-Wan will not let Satine fall without first giving everything he has.

Especially not if Maul, his old nemesis, is really involved. It's all tied together, he thinks: The Taths, the Separatists. The Sith. All of his enemies lining up on the other side. "I don't know," Obi-Wan tells Windu, "but if there is anything there, anything at all that can put a dent in the Separatists' plans, Anakin can find it."

"Then so be it," says Windu. "You and Skywalker make haste to Fondor and link up with Master Unduli's forces. Once your battle plans are set, set course for Thyferra."

"Understood, Master," says Unduli, signing out.

As her hologram fades, Mace turns to Obi-Wan and puts a hand on his shoulder. "And if Grievous is there…"

"We will stop him."

"Kill him. Kill him and you can turn this whole war around," says Windu, his face grave. "That's what we need, Obi-Wan. A victory. A real victory, something worth celebrating. Because our time is running out."

It is such a sudden thing: The elation of his return. The crushing blow of his departure. "You're setting out again? You just got back!"

"Not until tomorrow morning, Padme, but…yes. I can't do anything about it. It's orders."

Padme presses a hand to her forehead. Her—their—Coruscant apartment is open to the ecumenopolitan air of the city-planet, but suddenly it feels tight, hot, claustrophobic. Every day is a new pressure in the Senate with the war dragging on and the Republic's fortunes waning. Anakin is always away, always on some front line or infiltration that leaves Padme worried sick that some ill might befall him. Taris, disaster that it was, provided a welcome relief. The two of them together. Husband and wife where they are meant to be—side by side, taking on the world together. Not like this. Not spread a galaxy apart so often, with only a few days back at home to find each other again before the trials of war rip them apart.

She can dictate the fate of the Republic and its thousands of worlds from her roost in the Senate, yet in her own home Padme so often feels so helpless. This war has to end. For the galaxy's sake. For their sake. Especially for their sake. "I know I can't stop you," she says, "but…it's…"

"I have to do it," murmurs Anakin. He looks away, back ramrod-straight, statuesque as he looks out at the false cheer of the early-afternoon Coruscant skyline. His form in shadow. A face that she cannot see. "Even if it wasn't orders, Padme, I'm on the verge of uncovering something big, I know it. I can turn this war around. I can save…I can do this."

That strange, subtle hesitation in his voice. It is not a failure of confidence—Anakin is as bold as she has ever known him to be, that courage and bravery that she fell in love with back on Naboo—but something else, something in the shade of his muscle-bound figure. A hardening, a hollowing. As if every battle is scooping some tiny amount out of him and leaving a vacuum that grows fight by fight. If only she could be there on the front lines with him. If only she could drive back the darkness for him, if even just now and then. If even just to give him a rest and let the light return.

"How long can we keep this up, Ani?" she says. "How long can we keep doing this?"

"What, the war?"

"The war, this…this being apart. You change out there in all those battles. I can feel it. It's wearing on you, isn't it? You can talk about it. Even just to me. That's what we are, you and I—"

"I'm fine, Padme."

"Even if it's just little things. Like—" she stumbles for words, so far removed from the composed politician and orator she is every day in the Senate. Here she can be truthful. Here she can be uncertain. Or so she still hopes. "You were on Sleheyron. Did something happen there? I can sense that you're uneasy."

"Nothing happened."

"Ani—"

He turns quickly, smoothly, predator-like, and she flinches. Involuntary. Not a flinch out of fear or pain, but surprise. Yet still it is a flinch. "It was just an assignment," he says. Then that aggression is gone, washing away like a wave, and that warmth, that welcome feeling, returns to his face. He smiles, holds her shoulders, and lowers his voice. "Everything is going to work out, Padme. Trust me. I'm only getting stronger, and I'm going to win this war. For the galaxy, and for you. I promise."

"Everything I hear—"

"I promise you. I promise. And when this is over, we can do anything we like. Anything. We can run off to Naboo. We can leave everyone behind. We'll have earned it."

"Don't say things like that. We have responsibilities, you and I."

"Anything, Padme. Anything. We can do it."

From the way he says it—his jaw set, his forehead raising, that starlight in his eyes—she knows he means it. Anything. The Jedi Order is under fire. The Republic is struggling one very front. But Anakin is bolder than ever. "I know," she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. "But if you have to go then, give me something first."

"Anything you want."

She leans close, her eyes wide. "Give me today. Tonight. While you're still here with me."

No words needed. No defense, no explanations. Just their lips together, lover and lover, heart and heart in the moment under the urban sun. Fingers interlocked. Skin to skin. His smell, his taste. Her heart beats as if they are not a married couple but lawless lovers on the run.

But it is so brief. No sooner have their lips parted than Anakin's wrist commlink chimes. Padme lowers her face, bitterness creeping into her chest. "The Chancellor's office," Anakin says. "I can't leave this."

"I understand," Padme says, her voice thickening. "Take it, then."

"Padme—"

"It's okay, Anakin," she says. "It's fine. You can go."

But once he has left, once their apartment is lonely and empty and just her and the void overlooking the skyline once again, she presses her hands to her face and sighs. There is—there must be—a timeline where they are lovers to the whole world. A time where they do not have to hide from the Jedi and the Senate and the galaxy. Where they can be honest. Where warfare and death and battle does not rip them apart so often, so egregiously.

That is not this time. This time teems with pain and mourning and bracing for a shock that does not come yet lingers nonetheless, a quivering before a quake that threatens to shatter everything they have built. And Padme does not know if, should the worst come, she can remain standing.

Space fragments; time crystallizes. A chill lingers in the metal hollow of the Into Evening's Call as it tumbles through hyperspace towards Korriban, and Tamri wraps a blanket around her shoulders to stave off the cold. It is times like these when she feels most alone: Not just separated, but wholly apart from the galaxy itself, the swirling blue of hyperspace like an ever-shifting, impenetrable barrier through which pass no people, no words, no feelings. Like stepping into a bubble that only the churning, purring hyperdrive can deliver one from.

On this lonely ship, too, there is so little company. Sae dozes in the crew area, soft snores like irritated dismissals whenever Tamri looks her way. Beyond her slumbering master there is only Neelotas, isolated up in the cockpit, quieter and quieter with every passing day as if he can feel something coming. As if he has seen a look into the future and come away only disturbed. He has scarcely even spoken since they left Kuat, and as Tamri tiptoes her way up to the piloting station, she is unsure of how to broach conversation. All she can muster is, "Hey."

The Nautolan glances over his shoulder, bulbous eyes like staring into the black of space. "Little wizard," he murmurs. "Have a seat. It's weird when people stare over your shoulder when you're working."

"Is it a lot of work to keep this ship going in hyperspace?"

"No. But it sounds better if I say it like that. Kicking back and staring into the deep like this is its own kind of work, I guess."

Tamri runs her hands over the copiloting controls. Illuminated buttons and switches in red and blue and gold; throttles whose names befuddle her and whose purposes she dares not test. "I've never been any good at this flying stuff," she murmurs. "Lendon tried to teach me a couple things before we landed on Ossus."

"Rust," mutters Neelotas, his face placid. He sighs and looks up at the dirty metal ceiling. "His ship, really."

"Well, now it's yours."

"For now. Doubt he'll leave it behind forever."

Tamri frowns. "On Ossus—"

"He's probably still clawing his way around out there," says Neelotas. "Rust didn't set his mind to much for all the years I knew him, but when he did, he was tenacious. Relentless. The very few times he really went after a goal, he went after it with everything and didn't stop. If he wants the ship back, he'll fight for it." He shakes his head and exhales loudly. "Ah, why we talkin' about Rust? We got another planet we're heading to. Your Dark Side world, or whatever Korriban is."

Whatever it is. Cordova told her stories in the few hours they had together, yet still Tamri's imagination wanders to darker and direr places. The homeworld of the Sith. A planet teeming in the Dark Side. Dead lords and dead winds and dead canyons. "Have you ever heard anything about it?"

"About Korriban? Just in an urban legend here and there. Well, not really urban. Or a legend, more like a myth from religious kooks on Ylesia. I mean, hardly anyone knows how to get to it. I'd never even heard of it for most of my life."

"What kind of myth?"

Neelotas snorts. "The strange stuff you hear from the faithful sort when they're all screwed up on spice. Crazy guy I was talking to, after he finished going on a half-hour drunken rambling about his gods, started talking that they'd set foot on a bunch of worlds. One of 'em he mentioned was Korriban. Could barely understand half the drivel comin' out of his mouth, but I did catch that."

Shivers clamber up Tamri's forearms. "Gods?"

"Yeah, crazy stuff. Celestials, he called 'em. Mind you, this was, ah…five, six years ago? Maybe more. Well before the war."

Now it is more than just shivers needling Tamri. She has heard the name Celestials before, and not from any myth overheard on wayward Hutt worlds, but from the Jedi Temple's historical archives. Even there these ancient beings are spoken of in vagaries and suppositions, but the legends and tales have long excited Tamri's imagination. The Celestials, the most ancient of precursor races in the galaxy, forerunners so technologically advanced that they could shape star systems and worlds, beings so in tune with the Force that they could create and direct life. And then, long before the Republic ever took form, long before humans ever rose from the long-unseen Coruscant earth, the Celestials vanished. The Jedi tomes suggested that perhaps a client race revolted, or perhaps internal division doomed them. But there are only tales, only legends. Only the myths spoken on backwater worlds and overheard by the likes of Neelotas. "Fortunately, I don't think we're going to run into anything like that."

"Sure hope not. You're on your own if we do," says Neelotas. "What did the Jedi guy you met back there on Kuat tell ya we're after on Korriban, anyway?"

"A tomb of an old Sith Lord. It's near an ancient canyon called the Valley of the Dark Lords," says Tamri.

"What a pleasant name. Sounds like a vacation spot."

She chuckles. Eno Cordova's words, however, were nothing to laugh about. The Valley of the Dark Lords, the final resting place for many of the Sith Order's most revered names over the years. Ancient, horrifying dark practitioners of staggering power. Now nothing more than a haunt of ghosts. And even then, the tomb of the Sith they seek—Ludo Kressh—supposedly does not lie among those hallowed grounds. An old cave infested by bat-like pests called shyracks, Cordova had told her. That's what thousand-year-old legends tell us about Kressh's final resting place. Amid dust and darkness and echoes does his forgotten tomb lie. Follow your feelings. Follow the Force, push back the Dark Side, and you will find what you are looking for.

It sounded so optimistic amid the relative safety of Kuat. In the vacuum of hyperspace, it is a daunting challenge.

Neelotas looks back into the passenger corridor. "Where's Sae?"

"Sleeping," says Tamri. "She looked tired, so I'm trying not to bother her."

The Nautolan nods grimly. "Eh. So Korriban, it's…a Dark Side planet and all, yeah? Bad news for you Jedi types, right?"

"I guess. Not like I'd know much. Why?"

He pauses. Lower lip twitches, mind stirring. "She gonna be all right?"

"Who? Sae?"

"Yeah."

"Uh, I guess. Why?"

Neelotas shrugs. "S'pose it's nothing. Forget it."

But Tamri does not forget. She catches it in his voice, that lowered inflection, that question that does not slip past the tip of his tongue. Korriban is darkness and danger. It will test her. But she will not be the only one tested.

"You must feel it by now, Anakin. You must know. It is in the air all around us. The turning point of the war is near. Soon will be written our victory, our legacy. Or our defeat."

Anakin follows alongside the Chancellor through the spacious antechamber outside of his office. Stone reliefs of ancient warriors play alongside the dimly-lit walls. Beyond their voices and their footsteps is only the sound of silence. The hollow of this great room like a cushion, stifling all else but mentor and student, Chancellor and Jedi Knight, leader and fighter. "I will not fail, Chancellor."

"I have all the faith in the galaxy in you, my boy," says Chancellor Palpatine, looking Anakin in the eye with a grandfatherly expression, "but we are but two people in a galaxy of a trillion trillion beings, are we not? Do we, you and I, have the power to control our destiny and the destinies of so many?"

"If we must."

Palpatine smiles and sets a hand on Anakin's shoulder. "We must always, Anakin," he says. "Always." He turns away, shadows flickering across his scarlet cape. There is so much red and black to this room, colors of anger and loss, shadows jagged and warped as if demons of some fogged realm slip from the dusk and here reach out and make contact. "It was weakness that brought us here. It was weakness that began this war. Weakness in the Republic. Weakness in the Senate, in my predecessor, Chancellor Valorum. Weakness in the hearts of so many in the outlying systems across the Rim, who so eagerly handed their very lives over to the Separatist cause. Weakness can claim even the strongest of hearts. Even here on Coruscant. Even—" he pauses and raises his head— "all the way into the halls of the Jedi Temple."

Anakin frowns. He jumped to respond to the Chancellor's summons even despite Padme's disappointment, but there is an edge to Palpatine today. He can feel an air to the man, a confidence that borders arrogance, as if the Republic is not losing this war but on the verge of total victory. As if everything is proceeding according to his design. "What do you mean?"

Palpatine turns slowly, ponderously. "The Jedi Council informed me earlier that you are to be sent to Thyferra. To liberate the world. To combat General Grievous," Palpatine says. "It pains me that they do not realize your strength."

"I don't think—"

"Search your feelings Anakin. There is something more, isn't there?" says Palpatine. When Anakin hesitates, the Chancellor pushes. "You know your own strength. You know your power. You are more than just a pawn to be moved around the galaxy from battle to battle. You are a champion of the Republic. Of our people."

Anakin looks away. "A Jedi should be selfless. I am doing my duty."

"And you have done it better than any other," says Palpatine. His posture loosens, and again he looks like the welcoming, warm mentor whose lessons Anakin has heeded for more than a decade. "You have grown so much since we first met. From the boy you began as, you have become a leader. A warrior. A hero for a time that cries out for heroes. But it is not for heroes to blindly follow orders. To walk in the path laid out by those who fear their power, who envy their strength. The Jedi still refuse to make you a Master, do they not? Despite your successes? Despite your strength?"

"It's not about that," protests Anakin, but his will is fracturing. Palpatine is more than just words. There is a compulsion in the way he talks. A way that makes everything he says sound right. The Jedi Council was quick to snatch Garrako Arraton away from him for questioning, were they not? How quickly Master Windu dismissed his victory at Sleheyron. Even Obi-Wan urged the importance of seizing Thyferra for its strategic position, not because of what Anakin had learned about the Taths and their operations. They don't listen, any of them. Not the Council. Not Obi-Wan. They don't care what he has to say, do they? Only the Chancellor can see things as they are. The Chancellor, Ahsoka, Padme—who else? None that he can see.

Palpatine lowers his head. "Every champion of every age faces their moment, Anakin."

"What moment?"

"The moment when they—when you—must make a choice. The choice to follow, to obey, to heed the sweet words of dogma and coercion and not step out of line, or to follow one's heart. To become the man they were always meant to become," says the Chancellor. He steps closer, just one step into Anakin's personal space. "I am counting on you, son. You must be more than just a Jedi. The time will come in this war when you will have the chance to seize victory. To seize your moment. And no matter what others might say, no matter what the Jedi would have you believe, you must seize it. For the peace and security of our galaxy, our Republic, you must rise to your destiny. And I know you will. I can feel you growing stronger every day."

Anakin closes his eyes. It is why he left Tatooine, isn't it? Why Master Qui-Gon found him. Why the Chancellor took a liking to him in the first place. Why he speaks to him now. "I will not let you down," he says, looking Palpatine in the eye. "I promise."

The Chancellor smiles. "I know, Anakin. I know."