Shadows. Silence. All is still.

Sae feels like she has walked into a mausoleum. As soon as she stepped beneath the cover of the entrance into the Ziost pyramid, the howling gale outside stopped, the winds drowned out as if repulsed by a force field standing sentry at the door into the mountain. The cold has died, as well—the air is oddly warm, an alien humidity beading on her skin. Fog seeps over the floor outward towards the harsh conditions outside, veiling her feet and the black stone tile that layers the ground. She lowers her hood, lets out a slow, cautious breath, and ignites her lightsaber.

The yellow light only just throws back the darkness, the fog and the black reaching in from all sides like tendrils from some outer growth that will not be contained for long. The architecture here is of an aesthetic Sae has never seen: Lining the esophageal passage that runs from the mouth of the mountain into its bowels are dozens of rib-like protrusions jutting out from the sloping ceiling, each as black and as uncompromising as the mountain itself. Together they form a crushing array that imposes a claustrophobia like Sae has never known—not a terror, but a dread, as if she is within the guts of some antediluvian being so ancient and so beyond her comprehension that she is but an ant, a cell. Pricking her neck is the inarguable truth: She is not alone in here. It is not just Tamri. An other calls this place home.

"This place feels horrible," Tamri says in a tiny voice, clutching her arms.

Sae does not reply. She is tempted to retreat herself, to run away right at the end. The darkness that has grown this entire journey has at last reached its apex, the crescendo of power and knowing rising before her. But she cannot shy away. She cannot run. "Stick with me," she says to Tamri, her voice far more confident than she feels. "It'll be all right."

She clenches her fists and marches onward. The passage constricts, onyx tubes and wires arcing down the walls like veins and nerves. She can hear a feint thrumming, not like a heartbeat but more of an insect swarm far in the distance. Rubbing her eyes and shaking her head, she reminds herself why they are here: It all has to mean something. All that death and loss, everything leading up to this—it has to have meant something. Don't lose sight of that now. Don't throw everything away because you turned to your fear and your cowardice. When she reaches the first door—an inky, clover-shaped aperture more like a sphincter than a passageway—she holds out her hand. "Tam, wait here."

"What?" protests Tamri. Despite the girl's apprehension, she furrows her brow and shakes her head. "I'm coming with you, Master."

"No, you're not," says Sae. She knows it is not far past this door. The Dark Side is thriving here, so alive that it threatens to choke her. "I can feel that you're scared."

"No—I mean, yes, but I found this place, didn't I? I can do this, Master. I'm okay."

Sae turns and places a hand on her apprentice's shoulder. "I know you're strong," she says, "but let me handle this. Maybe it turns out to be nothing. Maybe it's no more than an inert device, and if so, I'll fetch you and you can see it, too. But a weapon of the ancient Sith might be beyond anything we know. And if what that…thing…on Korriban said to you is true and if there is some super-being in the heart of this mountain, I have no idea what it could do to you."

Tamri blinks rapidly. "What about what it could do to you?"

"That's a risk worth taking. Only that one," says Sae. When Tamri tries to protest again Sae wraps her in a hug, squeezing tightly, her hands pressed to the girl's back. "It'll be okay. We're almost through."

"Stay safe, Master."

"Wait for me."

Then she is through the passage, and just as quickly the door shuts behind her. Tamri is apart from her, stone and the Force bricking up a wall between them. There is only Sae.

Only she?

Another's voice. A familiar voice. Master Gallia.

"Sae," the voice whispers, feathers tickling Sae's heart. "Sae. Can you still remember?"

She steels her resolve, aims her lightsaber forward, and advances down the tunnel. Stay focused. Stay away from me.

Master Gallia's voice pokes and prods. "You were thirteen. We were on a mission to Alderaan. The Antilles family—do you remember their puppy? You wanted to play with it, even as we attended to negotiations. Can you remember what happened next?" the voice purrs. "Do you remember how their manor was bombed, when you saw that puppy dead and broken in the street? I know. You cried. You cried. But you were only a vulnerable girl, weren't you?"

Sae walks on, but now she clenches her teeth. Spears jab at her mind from every direction. The darkness presses closer, the rib-stones from the ceiling press in. Everything is so tight. She wants so badly to get out. "Search your feelings, Sae," Master Gallia's voice continues. "Don't you know them? I know them. I run my hand through your heart like the soft, warm earth of the Jedi Temple garden. I thumb through your memories like pages in a book."

There, ahead in the distance. Like a sun in miniature, the smallest of lights glows at the end of the passage. A miniscule burst of gold. Sae quickens her pace as her defenses crumble. "You are only a grain of sand. How you tumble and tumble in the wind," Master Gallia's voice taunts. "But I am a monument of marble. I will stand forever. The wonders I would show you. What you could be." The voice chuckles. "What she could be."

She will destroy it. She needs to destroy it. One look to confirm Tamri's findings on Korriban, and then Sae will rip apart whatever black heart beats in this rotten cavity. Everything will have meant something. Everything. That is only right. It is what she will do.

But is it what she should do? It is really right?

"Can you imagine," Master Gallia's voice torments her as Sae presses on through the passageway, "what your mother might have done if she could see you now? Do you think she would have abandoned you to die on the Coruscant streets? Would the one person who was sworn to care for you in this cruel life—your mother, your mother—have left you in the cold if she could only have seen the future?"

Sae clamps her eyes shut as she pushes forward, but the voice closes in: "Would you," it leers, "do the same to Tamri?"

Abruptly the voice stops—for Sae has reached the heart.

It is a massive chamber, large enough to house the Evening and several starfighters alongside it. Black-metal veins ripple down from the ceiling towards a colossal pit in the floor at the center of the room, above which a guardrail-lined overlook hangs. The pit glows like the light of noon, and great channels of air burst forth from it at regular intervals, exhaling towards a chimney fifty meters above Sae. She tests the overlook with one foot, then her weight. When she feels safe to proceed, Sae moves ahead, walking over the yawning space as it falls away below her, the darkness thrust back into its hovels as an ill light blooms around her in an ailed spring.

Sae reaches the end of the catwalk, leans over the guardrail, and looks down into hell.

Below her a devil thrashes. The Celestial, it must be; there is no other answer that comes to her suddenly-empty mind. It is a goldenrod globe, brilliantly lit yet inducing a feeling of sickness in Sae's gut so strong she holds back the urge to retch. The light roils and writhes, tentacles of darkness wreathing about it like vines. From every square inch of its surface spills fog bearing cinders and sparks of ethereal flame as if here fire descended to man, as if here the primordial touched the infinite.

Summoning all of her courage, Sae stares into hell.

And with a great serpentine eye the devil stares back. The apple is offered. The apple is taken.

Immediately pain bursts in Sae's head and she falls to her knees, shrieking, her mind exploding with images, sounds, smells. Such sensation! Such knowledge! In a sole moment the galaxy rushes in, time, space, all that is more. She can see it all. She can name it—where, when.

Coruscant. A shrieking infant lies on cracked duracrete.

The Jedi Temple. A skinny blond-haired girl cries.

Geonosis. Red blaster fire hits a soft body.

Florrum. A yellow-and-black-tattooed monster snarls.

Kuat. A brightly-dressed girl dances and sings.

The past—she knows this is the past somehow, all of it, even the parts she doesn't truly understand. But there is more. Through the Force the Celestial latches on to her feelings. Sae cries out as her mind races, takes her to places she does not know, cannot know, because they are not the past but the future. But will she know them?

Tython. Two shadowy figures hold hands in a field of moon's griefs.

Telos. A white-haired woman scowls and aims a blaster.

Coruscant. Fiery debris rains down from the sky like meteors.

Serenno. A red lightsaber ignites. A yellow lightsaber ignites.

Sae grips her head. Another thought, another place, another time, but this one hurts. It hurts. There is something wrong, something distorted, the picture blurry, the sound buzzing, the whole scene warped as if lost between truth and fiction, torn between fact and lie. Is it past? Future? Real? Imagination?

Space. Laser fire. A ship explodes. A heart shatters.

Then, as if breaking the trance, Sae lurches back from the edge of the catwalk and gasps. And then, again, comes Master Gallia's voice: "Do you see it all now, Padawan? Can you see the future?"

Sae snaps to her feet and takes off at a run. Fear tears into her with such ferocity, such bestial passion, that she does not bother to look back as the wind within the cavern intensifies into a howling vortex and the light rises into supernova. She runs. She can do nothing but run.

I have you. You can never lose me now.

You will not destroy me. You would never want to.

Such sights there are. Would you miss them?

Sae's wrist commlink chirps to life when she is almost back to the door. She jumps so suddenly that she nearly falls over when she lands. "Hello?" she stammers.

"Master?" Tamri's voice echoes, faint, afraid.

"Tam?"

"What—are you—"

Sae presses a hand to her chest. Calm down. The girl can hear your fear. But she cannot calm down. Her racing heart is not entirely her own. "What's happening?"

"It's—Master, what's happening in there?"

Sae dashes the rest of the way to the door. Before it opens, she takes one last look behind her. Deep within the mountain, hell rages like a volcano.

Then the door opens and she is through. She nearly trips over Tamri. In fright she raises her lightsaber, the yellow light shining in her apprentice's eyes, Tamri's face as pale as Sae as ever has seen it. "Sae?"

"We're going. What's going on?"

"What—"

Sae grabs Tamri's hand, if only to know that her apprentice (your apprentice? Really?) is still there. She cannot lose her.

But don't worry. I will never lose you. I will always be with you now.

Tamri snaps back into the present as they hurry down the corridor. "It's—" she begins, but her comm also sparks to life with Neelotas's voice.

"Hey!" Neelotas barks. "You still there?"

"What is it?" Sae says, her voice skipping an octave.

Neelotas pauses for a moment. "Wizard?"

"Neelotas?"

"Uh—there's droids falling out of the sky! A Separatist scout cruiser just showed up and started dumping drop pods. I've got two frigates in orbit, too. Get back here now!"

"Oh, shit, Dooku," says Sae before pulling Tamri forward once more. "We're coming."

Tamri eeps out of fright. "Master, what's going on?"

"We have to go."

"I know, but in there, you, what—"

"We have to go," pants Sae. She is only just fending off the thoughts, the images.

And Master Gallia's voice is back. "Do you see how quickly the world changes, Sae? How one little push separates the ignorant before with the terror of ever after? So tell me one thing. Just one."

Then it is Dooku's face in front of her eyes for the briefest of moments, and in that same instant his voice: "What is the way of the Sith?"

Sae bursts out of the mountain with Tamri in tow. The fog billows all around them, pluming into the whirling blizzard like smoke from a wildfire. The Evening is a dark smudge a hundred meters away, but Sae shrugs off the cold and the gale, for the elements are the least of her worries now. Run, run. As she closes in on the ship, however, she looks up and sees the shadowy profile of a Gozanti cruiser veering about the cyclone over the mountain, and when she draws even nearer to the Evening she sees her first enemy.

A super battle droid. "Jedi," the droid says as it spots Sae. "Kill them."

"Roger-roger," a standard battle droid nearby says, aiming its weapon.

But Sae is quicker. Suddenly all her thoughts, all her raging, boiling, steaming emotion overflows in a cascade strong enough to wash away entire lands. She has always been strong in the Force, but now, this—this—

But this power is to be expected. I am with you forever, now. Did I not say that?

There is fear. Fear anger hate suffering.

She pulls back a psychokinetic push and launches a wave of the Force at the droids. It catches every droid in its path, launching the super battle droid, hitting the next droid so hard that it rips its torso from arms, head, legs. In one blast of the Force the entire platoon of droids around the Evening is gone and Sae is left standing still, staring at her hand as if it is not her own.

Is it still her own?

Tamri's fingers lock around her other hand. "Sae!"

She returns. Go, go. "Get onboard," she says, her voice strange, airy, its tone infested with a slithering tongue.

Tamri hurtles up the boarding ramp, and Sae is right on her heels. She bolts to the cockpit as Neelotas punches buttons on his console, not bothering to so much as turn as he shouts, "More drop pods! And I've got a squad of fighters coming out of the cloud layer."

"Get us airborne," says Sae, her mind clearing as she drops into the copilot's seat.

Neelotas guns the thrusters and the transport lurches, jumps, comes alive and blows through the blizzard into the air. As they veer through the clouds, vulture droids zip past, bank, and form up on their tail. In seconds laser fire lights up the ship's aft. "Gah!" Neelotas shouts. "How did they find us so fast?"

"I dunno. Just go. Get to orbit," says Sae.

Tamri pants. "Master? What happened? You look…you…"

"Not now, Tamri!"

Neelotas's sensors scream as they burn into low orbit. "Energy torpedo!" he shouts. "Hold on."

He knifes away from the fighters, but they are too fast, too nimble, too accurate. As he dives the ship back towards the planet, the torpedo turns, homes in, and slams into the Evening's aft. "Ah!" shouts Sae. "Shields gone! Can you get us to hyperspace?"

"We're in the middle of Separatist territory! There's nowhere to go!"

"Anywhere that isn't here!"

Neelotas grimaces and punches buttons on his console. "Keep those shields going for a half-minute. That's it."

"I don't have a half-minute," says Sae. She throws switches, jams levers, but as the next volley of laser fire slams home, the ship's sensor array screams. Stars. Deep space. Lasers. An exploding vessel. Fire in the black. Has she seen what is about to happen? "Neelotas!"

"Got it! Hold on!"

He throws the hyperdrive handle and the Evening blasts into hyperspace. The laser fire fades, the droid starfighters fade, Ziost fades.

But I will not fade. You have seen what I have to offer, and so I am with you now. And you have only yourself to blame.

It is not twenty-four hours since he has returned to Coruscant from Thyferra, and already Obi-Wan has business to attend to. "You summed me, Masters?" he says to Master Ki-Adi-Mundi and Yoda as he enters the Jedi Temple's war room.

"Yes. For you, an urgent message has come," says Master Yoda, his diminutive form casting a long shadow in the light of the war room's holoprojector. "Given your report on Tatooine earlier, important, this appears."

"Tatooine? Is it Ventress?"

Ki-Adi-Mundi shakes his head. "No, not Ventress. And it is not from Tatooine. Take a look, Master Kenobi."

It does not take but a moment into the message for Obi-Wan's heart to drop. Satine.

"This is a message for Obi-Wan Kenobi. I've lost Mandalore. My people have been massacred…"

Obi-Wan looks on in horror. Satine. Mandalore. Suddenly what he and Ventress found on Tatooine comes rushing back. Maul. Savage. Vizsla dreams of an empire.

"Obi-Wan," the message finishes, "I need your help."

When Satine's message cuts out, Obi-Wan presses a hand to his forehead. "Maul," he murmurs. "It must be. It's exactly what that member of Death Watch said on Tatooine."

"Mandalore is a neutral planet," cautions Ki-Adi-Mundi. "We cannot get involved in neutral matters, Obi-Wan. Not after what happened on Taris. The Neutral Systems are barely hanging on as it is; if it is known that the Republic continues to meddle in their affairs—"

"Meddle?" protests Obi-Wan. Patience, he tries to tell himself, but his patience is wearing thin. "Anakin and I were ambushed on Taris on pretenses of a diplomatic meeting. And this is not Taris—Maul is a Sith Lord! Master Mundi, we cannot let this go unattended."

Yoda eyes Obi-Wan as if seeing through his face. "Lie, your feelings do not," says Yoda, "but patience, this matter requires, Master Kenobi. Right, Master Mundi is. If behind this Maul is, then a chance, have we, to ensnare our enemies."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Think, Obi-Wan," says Ki-Adi-Mundi. "If Maul is truly behind this, then allowing him to seize control of Mandalore openly allows the Republic pretense to move against the planet in a liberation effort. We can repair our image with the Neutral Systems, providing a vital buffer against the Separatists, and defeat Maul in one stroke. We have not had such an opportunity in a long time. We cannot pass it up."

"And let Mandalore suffer first," says Obi-Wan. "Did you hear that message, Master? The people are dying."

Yoda lowers his head. "Heard, we did, Master Kenobi. But for the Mandalorians who have already died, nothing, can we do. Mourn them we should not. Act rashly, we should not."

Ki-Adi-Mundi puts his hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder. "This is our chance to bring the Neutral Systems to us," he says. "Patience, Obi-Wan. This is a gift."

As Obi-Wan walks out of the war room, however, he feels it is anything other than a gift. They are throwing Satine and Mandalore away—sacrificing them on an altar in order to gain a little ground against the Separatist advance. He should know better. He is a Jedi Master. A Council member. Patience. Patience. Qui-Gon would tell him to trust in the Living Force, to think about here, now the present. Trust your instincts, Obi-Wan, and they will lead you in the right direction. The Living Force guides all life, and all life will speak through it.

But does the Living Force tell him to sacrifice a whole planet—and Satine—for strategic aims?

When he runs into Anakin in the Tython Mezzanine, the last thing he wants to do is talk. "Anakin," he murmurs, his head low, his thoughts still racing.

"Whoa," says Anakin. "That is not a look I have seen recently. What? You had the easy part on Thyferra."

"It's not about Thyferra. Don't worry about me."

Too late. Anakin plants a hand on his hip and flashes a wry grin. "Really?'

"What now?"

"Come on, Master. Obviously something's up.

Obi-Wan groans. Well, at least it's him. "Somewhere more private," he says.

When they are alone in the Jedi Temple's gardens, the AgriCorps members and Padawans having retreated for the evening, he stares off into the setting of the Coruscant sun and says, "It's Duchess Satine."

"Uh-oh. Here we go."

"Anakin, not now. It's Mandalore. What Ventress and I found about Maul and the Death Watch on Tatooine…well, Satine sent a message that Mandalore has fallen, and I imagine Maul's behind it," says Obi-Wan. He pauses. Breathe in. Breathe out. "Master Mundi and Master Yoda preached patience. They think it is best to allow Maul to come out into the open on Mandalore, in order to repair our image with the Neutral Systems and perhaps bring them over to the Republic."

Anakin scoffs. "They're blaming it on us? On the Taris business?"

"Not entirely, but…well, maybe entirely."

"That is ridiculous."

"They also think it will better allow us to snare Maul," says Obi-Wan, stroking his beard. "But we will be throwing away Mandalore. People are dying there."

Anakin nods. "And throwing away Satine."

"It's not about—"

"No, no, I get it. You, uh, want to help Mandalore to, uh, help a major planet of the Neutral Systems," says Anakin. "And the Council is iffy on that."

"What are you saying?"

Anakin shrugs. "Well, it's a shame that Master Fisto reported on the Kashyyyk situation about how he needs reinforcements. You'll have to go join him there instead."

Obi-Wan shakes his head in confusion. "What? Master Fisto isn't even at Kashyyyk, he's at Taanab."

"Well, yeah. There. You'll have to go there and help him out. Shame that'll take you away from the Temple. You better take the Twilight."

"What are you talking about? Master Fisto hasn't reported in for weeks, according to Master Yoda."

Anakin frowns. "Do I have to spell it out for you, Master?"

Oh. Anakin is buying him an excuse to get away. It's a flimsy excuse—and it relies on Kit Fisto not reporting in any time soon from the battlefront at Taanab—but an excuse nonetheless. "Ah. Yes. That report."

"Right, right," says Anakin. "Look, I can stick around here and tell the Council all about how his…uh, emergency transmission that only we received…required you to leave all of the sudden to help him out. And you'll be out of comms range. Definitely. You know those Separatist jammers these days."

"They are feisty," says Obi-Wan. Then he smiles. "Anakin—thank you."

"Yeah, yeah. Go get a move on to Mandalore and save your girlfriend already."

"Blazes, Anakin, for the last time, she and I—"

"I know, I know. I'll keep things calm around here. Better get going, then. And try not to scuff up the Twilight too much; I've come to like that ship."

Obi-Wan chuckles. "You would like a junker like that."

"Hey, it's a reliable junker," he says. "And Master—may the Force be with you."

"And you, Anakin," says Obi-Wan with a smile. "Don't get up to too much excitement while I'm gone."

It is not twenty-four hours since his droids reported that Sae Tristess and her Padawan ran from Ziost, but already Dooku pushes them aside. Sae is a strong Jedi Knight, true, and she has all the unsettled emotions that would make her a good addition to his force. His force—his Sith. The Sith Lord Sidious must not know about. He has Taron Malicos already, and he is working on the Padawan girl, Pella Starseer, despite her surprising resistance. Two there are always, Darth Bane's Sith teachings stated. Well, not anymore. This is not Bane's Sith. This is Dooku's.

But Sae has found him something far more valuable now. First that tomb on Korriban that the Padawan, Tamri Dallin, found, and now this. There is real power here on Ziost, here beneath snow and storms. This pyramid that he now walks within. This home. Here lies a Celestial, if the artifact on Korriban was correct. Here lies ancient power beyond anything Sidious knows.

Perhaps even the power to…to…

No, it is too early to plan such things, Dooku thinks. One step at a time. First he must see what awaits him here.

A voice probes his mind as he walks down this corridor, but Dooku shakes it off. Do not let it disturb you. Instead, think. Think: Less than a day ago a mere Jedi Knight unlocked the route to true power, and now it is his feet striding towards that source. How fascinating. How many times he has clashed with the best of them—Master Yoda and Master Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi—but it is someone so mundane, someone as simple and as overlooked as Sae Tristess, who has perhaps unearthed the path to turning the Clone Wars in the Separatist Alliance's favor forever. All Dooku needs is to open this treasure box. All he needs is to dip his hand into real power.

The Dark Side is alive here. Yes. Yes it is. But is it his voice that is saying that?

A familiar tone. Dooku is amid so many allies here—a whole battalion of battle droids stand ready outside of the pyramid, and a small armada waits in Ziost's orbit—but he feels as if an ancient enemy intrudes from the very black stone that makes up these claustrophobic walls. And now it is strong enough that he can place it. That voice—the same as the one he has heard in his dreams.

Talzin.

"At last, Dooku," Talzin's voice taunts him as he walks down the corridor. He can just make out a tiny light in the darkness ahead, a faint yellow, sickly, off. "At last you see. What is the way of the Sith? You are so close to finding the answer. All it takes is to keep moving forward."

"Do not disturb me, witch," Dooku murmurs as he moves down the passage.

"Do I disturb you? I? Or is it you? Lord Sidious still lies beyond your reach, does he not? For now you are still a puppet, Dooku. Even after claiming Taron Malicos, you are no one's master. You are no one's lord. You know what you must do. It is power you require, and power awaits. All you have to do is keep going."

And he does. He keeps going. That power calls to him, that light. The Dark Side swells, surges, roils like the sea in storm. So much energy. So much potential. "Sidious can replace you at any time," Talzin leers as Dooku draws nearer to the light. "He is so much stronger than you. How do you think you can ever defeat him as you are? And what are you now, but a slave? A fallen Jedi? You are nothing, Dooku, until you are everything. All you will do is serve until it is everyone you control."

Dooku emerges into a great cavern. A catwalk. A billowing column of air. Light all around. Golden. Sickly.

Below lies hell.

"Tell me, Dooku. What is the way of the Sith?"

He shrugs off his doubts. Pushes past his reservations. And he locks eyes with the demon, and it is in that gaze that he sees all, past, present, more.

Coruscant. A young boy trains with Master Yoda.

Naboo. His apprentice, Qui-Gon, falls before Darth Maul's onslaught.

Geonosis. The war erupts, and there is no turning back.

Dooku grits his teeth as pain overwhelms him. The demon latches on. The Celestial: He can feel it invade his thoughts. He throws all of his energy into keeping it out, but he hears the whispers, feels the tendrils slipping in. I am here forever. Did you think this would go any other way? Now see what sights I would show you.

Ziost, in orbit. Capital ships break apart under heavy turbolaser fire.

Serenno. A red lightsaber ignites. A yellow lightsaber ignites.

Mandalore—Mandalore?

Dooku groans in agony as his mind twists and contorts, the Celestial latching on to his feelings. Look, look. Look, Sith. See it all. Did you not want power?

Red lightsabers in action. A house of glass. Not a house—a palace.

Aerial warriors exchanging gunfire.

Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Dooku falls to his knees as the Celestial lets go. He clenches his teeth and gets to his feet, slowly, cautiously. Oh, his knees feel weak. But his feelings are alive with power. What he has seen. What he has seen!

"Do you know now what you must do, Dooku?" the voice of Mother Talzin calls out. "Can you see the path ahead?"

He can see. He knows what he must do.

But as he turns away from the raging Celestial in its stone pit, another image flashes in his mind. Pain lances his temples, and all Dooku can do is clamp his eyes shut to ward off the agony. But no: Open your eyes. Look upon the future. Will it happen? Is the future set?

Red lightsaber. Double-bladed weapon. A red-and-black-tattooed warrior. His mouth moves; he speaks carefully, intelligently.

There can only be one Lord of the Sith, Tyranus.

Then it is gone, and Dooku braces himself with one hand on the guardrail, the other clutching at his chest. Talzin's voice laughs. And she laughs, and she laughs.

When he emerges outside the mountain, his battle droid battalion commander salutes. "Count Dooku! Sir!"

"Not now," Dooku breathes. He fishes in his pocket for his private palm holocommunicator. Direct access point-to-point to one place in the galaxy. The one warrior he needs right now.

In a moment, General Grievous's holographic images blurs into picture. "Count Dooku," says Grievous, taking a knee. "I regret to inform you about Thyferra—"

"I do not care about Thyferra, Grievous," says Dooku. "Leave your forces and regroup with Admiral Trench's armada preparing to assault Kashyyyk."

"You want me attacking the Wookiees?"

"No, Grievous. You will call off that assault. Instead bring Trench's forces to Ziost. As many as you can, as quickly as you can."

Grievous hesitates before continuing, his voice befuddled: "Ziost? Is that a planet?"

"Do not question me, Grievous. I will send you everything you need to know. Now do as I say."

For a moment Dooku thinks Grievous will contest his order. Instead the cyborg bows his head and says, "As you wish, Count Dooku. It will be done."

"That is all," Dooku murmurs, and he cuts the channel before Grievous can reply. Then he presses a hand to his forehead and grimaces. This pain. This foreign, strange feeling. What is happening? It is as if something else has suddenly taken root within his thoughts.

But that is only right, after all. I will always be with you now.