Chapter Two: Poisoned Souls

De-Lanna was just about to zip her backpack closed when a knock sounded on her door. She was alone; Ekra had left hours ago for history lessons under Master Tionne. "Come in," the brown-haired Jedi called. Her door opened and she suddenly felt hands around her waist.

Startled, she spun to face the fool—Ran, little to her surprise—and bumped hard into a table. Her backpack fell to the floor. "What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, trying to gain the advantage in the encounter.

"Just saying hello to my fellow travel-mate," he replied easily, placing one hand on the table at either side of her, effectively trapping her. "So hello."

"Yes, yes," she said, forcing down a blush at his closeness. "Hello yourself. Now, would you kindly back off? You smell like bantha poo-doo."

"Oh really now? I just got back from the jungle; I thought I'd smell fresh and woody. You know, pleasant."

In truth, he did smell like the peaceful outdoors, but De-Lanna was not about to admit it to him. "Look, just…just let me go, okay? You make me uncomfortable."

He pouted, looking very ridiculous. "Well, you're no fun. You could at least play along, you know. Then you'd lighten up and enjoy yourself, instead of being such crabby old maid."

A vein appeared on her temple, pumping slightly. "What did you just call me? Crabby old maid?" A dark light glistened in her blue eyes. "Oh, you're really asking for it now, Ran Tonno-Skeve!"

He let go of the table, raising his hands defensively. A mocking smile was splayed across his lips. "Please don't hurt me, Lady Tamaran!" he begged in a falsetto. "Or if you are…please be gentle." He punctuated the line with a leer.

"You're really starting to push my buttons," she warned nastily.

"Oh, I think I can push your buttons all right," he replied, "you just got to let me."

"I'm three seconds from breaking your nose!"

"There is no emotion, De-Lanna," he countered, smiling even wider.

"Two seconds!"

"You wouldn't."

"Last chance!"

"You're beautiful, did you know that?"

De-Lanna allowed herself a small moment of satisfaction as her fist crashed into Ran's cheek, whipping his head around and knocking him into a wall. "I warned you about being fresh with me, buster."

But he just laughed at her, rubbing his bruised cheek gingerly. "Yeah, but it was damn worth it. Come on, I'm not such a bad guy, am I?"

"No, but you sure are irritating. I'm surprised Ascera hasn't murdered you herself yet, because I'm about to—and don't think your pretty eyes are going to save you."

"So you think I have pretty eyes, do you?"

"You're really asking me to kill you, aren't you?"

"You don't mean that, of course." He walked right back to her, once again standing very, very close. "You might think I'm just another monkey-lizard skirt-chaser—and you'd be right on some level—but I'm only this tenacious when its someone I seriously admire."

His hand touched hers and her heart skipped a beat. "You mean that?" she breathed.

"I'm a prankster, I'm irresponsible, and I'm a pain, but I'm not a liar."

She laughed at his assessment of his merits. "You know, that's strangely comforting."

"So does this mean you'll fall madly in love with me?"

She shoved him against the wall, pressing herself close against him. She leaned in, her lips just about to brush against his—and then she hit him in the jaw with a fierce uppercut.

"Of course not, nerf-herder." She picked up her backpack and walked out of the room.

The return trip to Mathassi was replete with similar episodes. If Ran was not trying to seduce De-Lanna in the cabins, he was doing so in the mess, outside the refresher, or in the cargo hold. Each time, the brown-haired Jedi simply rebuffed him with a punch and a smile. She had to admit though, as much entertainment as she was gleaning from dealing unspeakable physical punishment to the mischievous rogue, she was finding their exchanges humorous in their own right. It became a game, and her strikes became more playful and less painful.

Ascera, as was her wont, simply maintained her aloof Jedi calm and shook her head in resignation at their combined antics.

As they drew closer to their destination, De-Lanna overheard Ran asking the Twi'lek, "I recall that you wanted to check on Master Skywalker's records. Did you ever get the answers you wanted?"

"I wanted to learn more about the Mathassi and Dalaan Norsh, the Jedi who purportedly protected them and defeated Darth Malice," she replied. "There was no mention of the former, but there was a file about the latter. Jedi Norsh was, as we heard back on Mathassi, a renegade who was respected by the Jedi Order, even if he tended to go his own way. However, Norsh never reported back from his trip to Mathassi. Many in the Council thought him dead, slain by Malice."

"A discrepancy in the historical records? A flaw developed from the passing of time?" De-Lanna ventured, though she did not put much stock in the idea.

Ascera shook her head. "More likely that something happened to Norsh on his return to civilized space and the Council never found out."

"And this disturbs you why?" Ran inquired.

Ascera's headtails quivered in thought. "There's something amiss about all of this. I still feel like we're missing a crucial piece of the greater puzzle."

"Well," the green-eyed Jedi said loftily, "as the story of the philosopher-king Bethadies goes, all you have to do is look at the obvious to find the mysterious. That was how he discovered the secret kingdom of Aklitos—by just looking under a rock he sat on every day of his life."

"I'll keep that in mind, Ran." A red light flashed on the flight panels. "We're dropping out of hyperspace. There it is again, Mathassi."

De-Lanna let out a sigh of longing. "We were just here, but it still takes my breath away."

Ran took the ship around toward the coordinates of the Jedi Temple. He settled the transport right by the cemetery where they had faced off against Quid Carm, where De-Lanna had witnessed Ran slice off the Rodian's hand. The ship shuddered as its landing routines worked themselves to completion. The landing ramp dropped down and cold wind cut into the Jedi trio with unrelenting ferocity. De-Lanna's teeth chattered. "Damn," she murmured, pulling her cloak around her. "Just when I was growing to appreciate the view, too."

Weeks had passed since they last visited these holy grounds, but nothing had changed in the slightest, or so it seemed. They took a step toward the grand, yet decaying, Temple doors—and Ascera fell to her knees, crying out in pain and clutching her head. Ran went to her side and De-Lanna drew her lightsaber, its white blade flashing to life; she looked around warily for whatever had weakened the Twi'lek.

"I'm all right," Ascera assured them on unsteady feet. "I just felt something very powerful, very dark…." The ground started to tremble and it seemed as if the whole mountain would collapse in on itself.

De-Lanna suddenly felt a thousand kilos heavier; it was impossible to move her arms or legs, and it became exceedingly difficult to simply breathe. "Something's…pushing us…down," she gasped, falling to one knee. Her lightsaber dropped from her hand, its blade vanishing. It sank into the snow with an audible thud.

"Some form of telekinesis," Ascera reasoned, struggling to remain standing. Her efforts were valiant, but futile; she struck the snow face-first. She turned her head so that she could speak. "Whatever is doing this…is…incredibly…powerful!"

Ran let out a cry and crashed onto his back, grunting as countless kilos of force pushed him down, crushed his chest. "It can't be…Darth Malice?"

Then, as abruptly as it came, the sensation disappeared.

Breathing heavily, the three Jedi regained their feet and looked to the monolithic structure of the Temple. The dark side was no longer hidden to their senses. After that display of power, something dark and fearsome exuded a palpable sensation of evil and foreboding through the walls, the snow, and the very air. De-Lanna saw a vision in the Force: Of a handsome, roguish human with a thick beard, clashing his blue lightsaber against the glowing red of a masked warrior. Blood matted the bearded man's homespun robes, as it darkened the black garments of the enigmatic swordsman. She knew with unsettling certainty that Darth Malice, Dark Lord of the Sith, had been freed.


The three Jedi made their way directly to the cryogenic chamber below, where they had confronted Marcus Tauth and his apprentices before the frozen prison of the Sith Lord. As they had dreaded, the cryogenic chamber lay open, white smoky gas pouring onto the stone floor, giving the circular room an unnatural chill. Their breaths misted before them.

"Your senses in the Force are sharpest of us all, Ascera," Ran said. "Do you feel anything?"

The Twi'lek nodded. "Beyond that door over there is our foe. I'm sure of it."

"You can't be serious about fighting a Dark Lord of the Sith!" De-Lanna exclaimed. "Even with three of us, I can't imagine that it would be difficult for Darth Malice to simply crush us with his telekinesis, like he did up there."

Ascera only nodded again. "But we cannot let him roam free, either. It is our duty as Jedi to stop this menace at any cost." Her tone was grim, her expression set and resolute.

De-Lanna took upon her example and strode boldly toward that door, swallowing her rapidly growing fear of the great darkness that lay beyond. Her hand was only centimeters from the handle when the portal exploded in a shower of rent iron and crushed stone. The brown-haired Jedi fell back, her lightsaber flaring to life, burning away the debris that flew at her face. Two red slashes of light appeared in the doorway, illuminating the determined faces of Quid Carm and Leena.

"Them again!" Ran hissed. "So they were lying in waiting." With two swift clicks of a button, two identical blue blades hummed in his hands.

"You shall not pass," the Rodian growled stalwartly, gripping his lightsaber with two hands—one of them a steel replacement.

"We won't let you interrupt our master," the Twi'lek dark Jedi said. She brought her blade to bear in a neutral stance. "Come, Jedi, show us your strength or die at our feet."

A breath later, the chamber was engulfed in war.

De-Lanna and Ascera launched their assault on the closest foe, the Twi'lek Leena. The older woman was faster than the two Jedi, parrying their strikes with near-contemptuous speed. Soon, Leena was gaining the upper hand, forcing them back with her wild, strong blows. But De-Lanna suddenly tumbled away, disengaging from the fight. She closed down her weapon and shut her eyes, falling within herself.

The threads of destiny swirled into her hands, reforming itself into the cloth of her will. She envisioned Ascera driving forward with a desperate thrust, saw Leena strive to step away from the killing blow—only to bump her shoulder into the wall, giving Ascera an opportunity at victory. Fantasy soon became reality, and the dark Jedi's heart stopped, a glowing blue lightsaber blade imbedded in her breast.

Ascera drew her weapon free with a flourish and clipped it to her belt. "Thanks, De-Lanna," she said. The brown-haired Jedi simply nodded.

Behind them, Ran spun his double-bladed lightsaber so fast that they could only see a continuous blue circle around him. His feet slid across the stone floor effortlessly and in perfect balance. Carm fought back bravely, parrying the green-eyed Jedi's fierce, ceaseless barrage. But it was obvious who would win in the end. The Rodian tired and his guard slipped. Ran, his back to his opponent, stabbed behind him with the end of his weapon, driving a blue blade into the dark Jedi's midriff, slaying his foe in a final blow. With an almost uncaring gesture, the green-eyed Jedi hurtled the corpse through the air with a Force blast.

De-Lanna did not look at his face; she knew that his usually bright eyes would be dulled and void. She thought she could feel a piece of him die inside—he had claimed that he did not kill needlessly, yet he had just unhesitatingly taken a life.

"Onward," he said coolly, ignoring the two bodies on the floor. "Tauth and that Sith Lord are still out there." He strode for the ruined portal, and when he passed by her, De-Lanna shivered.

Ascera touched her shoulder and shook her head. "We're losing him," she said simply and coolly, even though an unfathomable sadness lay hidden in her eyes.

"We won't," the brown-haired Jedi protested. "I'm not going to see a fellow Jedi fall to the dark side. It's our duty as Jedi Knights—as friends—to bring him back. We have to talk to him."

"No."

De-Lanna spun to face the Twi'lek, shocked and uncomprehending. "What? How can you, of all people, say that? He grew up with you!" She was shouting by the end of her tirade.

Ascera took it all in stride and calmly replied, "Right now, his anger is giving him strength. It's destroying him, yes, bringing him ever closer to the darkness. But in this place, we need that raw power. I don't like this any more than you do." She suddenly hugged herself, her lips trembling; her composure was falling apart. "But I don't know any other way to go about this."

"At least talk to him!" De-Lanna cried.

"Damn it, don't you think I want to?" Tears flowed down blue skin, glistening in the poor lighting of the Temple. "I've known him all my life. He's the brother I've never had. I want nothing more than to protect him from this! He's already been through so much as a child, and the last thing he needs is a fight with the dark side. But we don't have a choice—we need every trump card we have if we're to beat Tauth and that Sith Lord. So don't you lecture me, De-Lanna Tamaran! I love Ran with all my heart—as a friend, as a brother." Ascera took in a deep breath and shouted, "So don't you dare lecture me!"

She was crying rivulets, unchecked, unnoticed. Hysteria lurked in her eyes, on the verge of release. De-Lanna could not look at her; Ascera Dax always seemed to be in control of herself, but here she was, a heartbeat from collapse. "We…um," the brown-haired Jedi began falteringly. She cleared her throat and tried again. "We better get going." She matched words to action, heading through the broken doors and deeper into the Temple. Soft footsteps behind her indicated that Ascera was following.

Ran stood at the base of a long, crumbling flight of stairs. "What took you?" he asked. His green gaze swept down into the darkness. "I'm not very good at sensing things in the Force, but even I can feel it. They're down there, all right." He reached into his belt pouch and drew forth a small glow rod, igniting it and shining its yellow-white beam down the stairs. Without preamble, he strode onward.

De-Lanna lit her own glow rod, keeping her lightsaber in hand, her thumb lightly touching the activation switch. With a dark side master and a Sith Lord nearby, she wanted to be prepared for the inevitable battle.

The stairs led to a maze of corridors that cut between racks upon racks of mummified bodies—a vast catacomb of Jedi who long since became one with the Force. De-Lanna imagined that there had once been a sense of peace and power upon these most sacred of grounds, but she could only feel the sickening morass of the dark side. She wanted to scrub her skin, so foul was the air to her bristling senses.

They followed that fetid sensation through the winding pathways, past hundreds of shrouded bodies. Centuries of dust kicked up with each step they took, forcing them to cover their mouths with their cloaks. De-Lanna's eyes stung from the dirt that got past her garments. She found her breath stifled and coughed lightly.

And then they turned a corner. There, at a dead end, huddled a naked man. His beard was frosted, as if from some great chill, and he shivered uncontrollably. The dark side emanated from him like heat from an ion engine…but De-Lanna did not feel Tauth anywhere nearby. The only darkness she could feel was from this strange man. When the light of their glow rods flashed upon him, he panicked, staring at them with wild, frightened eyes like an animal.

"Get away! Away!" he growled with feral abandon. He struck out his hand, and Ascera let out a yelp of surprise as her lightsaber unhooked itself from her belt, flying into his hand. The blue blade sprang to fiery life, and he charged with a loud battle cry. De-Lanna stepped to the fore, her white blade trapping his in a tight lock. With the ease of an expert fighter, she tucked her foot behind his leading leg and bashed her forehead against his nose. He fell back, lost his balance against her calf, and tumbled to the ground. She placed her glowing weapon against his chest, letting him feel its heat. Ascera calmly called her lightsaber back to her hand and returned it to her belt.

"Darth Malice, I presume?" the Twi'lek asked peremptorily.

The man's reaction was unexpected, to say the least. His bright eyes flashed with raw, irrational hatred. Blue-white lightning erupted from his flesh, striking walls, floor, and ceiling, chopping off whole blocks of stone in its blazing fury. "I'll kill him, I swear I will! For all he's done, I swear I'll put a blade into his foul heart!" Suddenly a calm swept over his bearded face and rational thought seemed to return to him. "There…there is no emotion," he said quietly, hopefully.

On impulse, De-Lanna replied, "There is peace." The dark energy that set a pall in the catacombs abated somewhat, as if a great dam had been opened, releasing the foul waters elsewhere. The evil still lingered, but its intensity had diminished.

His eyes closed in relief and he dropped his head to the dusty ground. Sensing no further hostility, the brown-haired Jedi extinguished her blade and let him sit up. She handed him her cloak to cover himself. "So," the man bellowed, "the Jedi Council saw fit to send investigators out to find me, eh?"

"If not Darth Malice, then Dalaan Norsh," Ascera amended. At the man's nod, she said, "This answers some questions and creates yet even more."

"Okay," Ran interrupted, sounding nonplussed, "For the dim lightsabers in the group, could someone explain what's going on?" Inwardly, De-Lanna suppressed a smile; he suddenly seemed more like his old self and less like the nightmarish dark side monster she feared he would become.

Ascera seemed to feel the same, for her lip twitched in a half-smile; her headtails practically danced with joy. "This whole time we thought that Darth Malice was inside the cryogenic chamber and that Dalaan Norsh had been the one who contracted the Mathassar to build the Temple," the Twi'lek said. "But something felt wrong—there was no logical reason to suspect duplicity, but the Force trembled with imbalance somehow. The truth of the matter is that Dalaan Norsh—this man here—was the one imprisoned this whole time, which begs two questions: why was Norsh here and what happened to Darth Malice?"

"I can answer part of that," the bearded man, Dalaan Norsh, said, standing. "I was sent by the Jedi Council to apprehend Darth Malice. We chased him to the world of Mathassar, which, based on your words, I'm assuming is where we still are. I confronted the Dark Lord in his fortress, where I found him completing the final stages of a Sith superweapon. Among those components was a high-grade freeze-coolant system. I intended to use the coolant device as a makeshift cryogenic chamber, pushing Malice in and thus taking him alive. But he turned the tables on me and pushed me in instead."

"But that doesn't explain how this Temple was built," De-Lanna noted. "According to Mathassar lore, you were the one who emerged from the fortress to commission this Jedi Temple as the ultimate safeguard against the frozen body of Darth Malice."

Norsh just shrugged. "I know not. Now it is my turn to have my curiosity sated. For starters, how long have I been in this…place, this Jedi Temple? Next, who are you and why hasn't the Council acted sooner to find me? Surely they would have sensed any deception as to whoever is using my identity."

The three Jedi looked at each other, finding no easy way to brook their answer. Ran, in his usual boldness, bluntly answered, "You've been missing for two thousand years, and the Jedi Order as you know it—Knights, Masters, and Council—is no more. They were destroyed by a Sith Lord named Palpatine decades ago."

Ascera continued, "We are members of the new Jedi Order, sent here on a mission of learning. Instead of finding holocrons filled with ancient Jedi techniques long lost to the galaxy, we find a people who revere the Jedi Knights, a lost Jedi, and a missing Sith Lord. And this is where we stand."

De-Lanna watched Norsh's reaction to the news. For a man displaced in time, who just heard the tale of his entire universe turned upside down, he seemed to take the stunning pronouncement well. With a level of composure that would shame even Ascera, the bearded Jedi noted with dry humor, "Clearly, my nap was longer than anticipated."

"That's the understatement of the cycle," Ran murmured humorlessly.

Norsh shook his head. "I mourn the loss of my fellows, and mourn even more that I find myself here, so far removed from everything I've ever known. But I trust this to be the will of the Force." He looked up at the group. "So, young Jedi, care to tell me what brings you to this remote place?"

Ascera spoke tersely, with a bit of a suspicious edge that De-Lanna found disquieting. "A dark side master named Marcus Tauth, who learned the ways of the Force from one of Malice's Sith holocrons, came to this Temple to revive the Dark Lord so that he could learn the ultimate Sith arts from him. We're here to stop him. But we've come to a crossroads with no direction; Darth Malice is not in his cryogenic chamber as we had assumed and Tauth is nowhere to be found."

Suddenly, he smiled. "You have no need to worry about that, young Jedi. You see, if this Tauth wants to learn the Sith arts, then there's one place to go that's just as good as Malice himself—the Dark Lord's fortress. And I know how to get there." He spread out his hands widely, a grand gesture. "It seems that this humble Jedi Knight will be of service to you on your mission. Surely our meeting must be the will of the Force."

De-Lanna ran a hand across the scorched stonework and looked at the bearded man warily. "Is it the will of the Force to wield Force lightning with impunity?" Her question was barbed.

Norsh blinked, as if he did not recall unleashing the electrical storm. "The dark side is strong here," he intoned with a shrug, implying that it was the only possible explanation. "I can only surmise that it must be so strong as to amplify any negative emotion into dark power. I apologize for the…outburst. I am but a Jedi Knight, and only recently appointed that rank when I came here to Mathassi. My ability to resist the dark side is still fledgling."

De-Lanna was not so easily convinced. The dark side was truly strong here, that was true, but she had seen no evidence to substantiate Norsh's theory. For one, she thought, Ran hasn't been throwing around lightning bolts yet, and he's the most emotionally trigger-happy of all of us. And for the other, there was still that unexplainable radiation of the dark side from Dalaan Norsh. Something did not add up, De-Lanna mused, and one look at Ascera and Ran confirmed that she was not alone in her suspicions. The brown-haired Jedi resolved to watch their new traveling companion with great care.


"Our first order of business is to get to the fortress itself," Norsh said as the party of Jedi walked up the stairs back into the Temple proper. "I hope you brought a speeder or equivalent—the trek is quite long."

"Um, yeah, about that," De-Lanna muttered, "we walked."

The bearded man simply chuckled. "Well, that could be problematic, then."

Suddenly, all four Jedi stopped in their tracks, sensing the same thing: a pall over the Force, dark and gritty. "Dark Jedi," De-Lanna said grimly. "They're above us, in the holocron library."

"I recognize this feeling," Norsh said evenly, his brows furrowing in memory. "These are the Quelsar that Darth Malice trained to fight the Mathassar. Be wary, young Jedi. If there are still Quelsar trained in the ways of the Sith, they will be very formidable warriors."

"Then we'll have to be just as formidable," Ascera concluded coolly, resting a hand on her lightsaber. "Normally, I'd try to convert them to the light side, but I suspect that two millennia of Sith teachings will prove to be an insurmountable culture barrier."

Norsh nodded. "They were inconvertible when I fight fought them. I daresay they will still be as stubborn." The bearded Jedi strode forth, taking the lead, a lightsaber in his hand—taken from the corpse of Quid Carm. De-Lanna watched him closely, noted the easy, eager gait and natural leadership aptitude. She knew nothing about the Dalaan Norsh of history, but his sheer presence indicated that he was a powerfully charismatic man. No wonder, she thought, that he led so many Mathassar into the Jedi way.

But there was something odd about him, too. The darkness she and her friends had felt radiating from him down in the catacombs lingered around him. It was not suffused into him, or was even a part of him—rather, it felt like a cloak wrapped around his mind, always there but not directly influencing his actions. Instead, the darkness was…hiding something within Dalaan Norsh. It was an unsettling sensation, one that made De-Lanna want to draw her lightsaber and keep it between her and this mysterious man.

They walked up the stairs cautiously, and the closer they came to the holocron library, the stronger the Quelsar's dark energies became. Norsh opened the door and burst in, De-Lanna and Ran close behind. Three lightsabers—red, white, and blue—boiled forth. Five Quelsar, who were ransacking the holocrons in the chamber, looked up in surprise. They drew their own lightsabers, and the room was vibrating with the humming of weaponry.

De-Lanna studied the aliens curiously. They were taller than the Mathassar, and looked more like baseline humans, but with bony horns protruding from their shoulders and forehead. They were feral, demonic to behold, with yellow eyes gazing at them with the trained hatred of Sith warriors. The brown-haired Jedi stepped forward challengingly. The Quelsar complied.

The battle was fierce, but swift. Between De-Lanna and Ran, with Ascera controlling the fight from afar with telekinetically thrown holocrons and tables, the Quelsar were kept at bay. But it was Norsh who solidified their victory. He felled three of the Quelsar with two sweeping blows from an archaic fighting style that had not been seen since the Republic's birth. Though De-Lanna only saw a few of his moves in the quick fight, it was enough for her to realize that he was a master of swordplay.

"These Quelsar were stealing holocrons," Ascera reasoned, finding a number of the crystal objects on the corpses. "And they contained maps of the region, particularly space outside of the Mathassi system. And here's technical readouts of Coruscant's planetary defenses."

"But those would be useless," Ran noted, "Those holocrons are dated back two thousand years. A lot would have changed in that time."

De-Lanna shook her head. "Not necessarily. Coruscant's defenses haven't changed in over five millennia. If the Quelsar got a hold of this data, they would know a lot about how to penetrate planet-wide shielding."

Ran nodded, following her reasoning. Norsh also nodded, having come to the same conclusion. "It seems the Quelsar are preparing an assault, and need military information. So, they raid this motherlode of archived knowledge. But last I checked, the Quelsar and Mathassar had no form of hyperspace travel. They didn't even have subspace travel."

"They still don't," Ascera said. "We met with the Mathassar before coming here; they're still earthbound. I can only imagine that the Quelsar, sequestered in their territories as they are, are under similar straits."

"Something's up," Ran reasoned grimly. "Something very big. And we're missing some pieces to the puzzle."

Norsh stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Our only lead right now is Tauth and Malice—and I can assure you that we'll find Tauth at the fortress. The question, how did he leave this complex if you were right on his heels?"

Ascera stepped forward, placing a hand on a nearby holocron. "I can remedy that," she replied enigmatically. With a wave of her fingers, the crystalline cube flashed and the ghostly image of a Mathassar Jedi Knight floated above the glowing facets. "Does this holocron contain a blueprint of the Temple grounds?" she asked the image.

The Mathassar holo replied in broken its native language, with an eerily offset dub translating for it. "Yes. Of which level do you wish to see?"

"The catacombs. We are looking for any exits from the catacombs that do not lead to the Temple proper."

De-Lanna nodded in understanding. "You think that there must be some secret tunnel built by the Mathassar, one that Tauth might have used." Ascera nodded, but the holo brought low that theory.

"There are no such exits."

The Twi'lek looked mildly miffed, but the brown-haired Jedi was already thinking of other possibilities. De-Lanna posited a second question, "Does this holocron contain points of weakness in the Temple structure, or density and rock formation data?"

"Yes."

"Show them." The Mathassar vanished and in its place rose a running line of numbers. "Ascera, let me see your datapad."

"I like your idea," the Twi'lek congratulated, handing over the device.

Ran scratched his head. "What're you doing?"

"I'm scanning the area with the datapad," De-Lanna explained without looking up from her work, "and cross-referencing it with the historical information from the holocron. If there is a secret tunnel in the catacombs, and if it was hidden from the Mathassar holocrons when they were archived, then any disparity will reveal the location of our hidden tunnel."

"But the question remains—why would the Mathassar, who built the Temple, not record the existence of a secret tunnel?" Norsh noted.

"A good question," Ascera murmured. "I'd guess that it was added after the fact, by an outside party."

De-Lanna let out a yip of victory and declared, "I found it! There's definitely a tunnel down in the catacombs, and it looks like it's a stone door, so no wonder we missed it when we were down there—it would look just like the rest of the wall. But with this, we should be able to find it easily and cut it open with our lightsabers. Come on, we're one step away from catching Tauth."

The brown-haired Jedi eagerly led the way. She suspected that the tunnel would lead outside of the Temple, perhaps into the nearby mountains. To her great surprise, the tunnel went deeper. It deposited the party next to a rusting rail track, with two train launchers by its side. One of those launchers held a speeder, and its controls were destroyed by some form of energy weapon. The other was empty. De-Lanna noted the flakes of rust near its clamps. It had been recently used.

"Tauth used his lightsaber to disable one speeder and took one the other," she reasoned. "Looks like this rail track leads right into the mountains, to the east."

"Malice's fortress was in the east," Norsh said quietly. "I do not like this. A Jedi Temple that has a secret tunnel leading in the general direction of a Sith Lord's enclave. The coincidences are staggering, and the implications more so."

De-Lanna agreed with the sentiment, but for different reasons. Norsh was the element she found to be the most staggering, the greatest coincidence of all. She felt like she was on the verge of an epiphany, as if the mysteries wrapped around the Jedi Temple were only a thread away from being unraveled and revealed. She knew she had all the pieces—all she had to do was put them together.

Ascera seemed to be on that same precipice, for she said, "These implications are ones I would like to investigate further. There are things the Jedi holocrons in the library can reveal, if the right questions are asked."

"I'd like to join you," De-Lanna offered quickly. "Ran, Jedi Norsh, could you work on that other speeder? If we're going to catch up to Tauth, we'd better have that speeder repaired." With that, she and the Twi'lek went back up the tunnel and further up into the library.

"It seems we're thinking the same thing," Ascera noted without preamble as soon as they stood amidst the crystals once again. "Dalaan Norsh is the key to this mystery. We need to know what about him makes him the catalyst."

"The dark side lingers about him," De-Lanna said with a twinge of fear. "It's not a part of him, but its always present around him. I'm surprised Ran hasn't felt it."

"It's only because his skills in that field aren't as finely-tuned as ours," Ascera explained. "Which only means that this dark side energy around Norsh is much, much more subtle than we realized. Ah, here's Norsh's biographical data." The image of a Mathassar Jedi Knight appeared over a holocron, speaking in an alien tongue of their hero, Dalaan Norsh. Ascera commanded the image to translate.

"Dalaan Norsh told much about the Order on Coruscant, and of its ways and teachings. We tried to emulate Jedi Norsh's words in our deeds. It was under his banner that we fought and defeated Darth Malice. Later, after entombing Malice's body beneath our Temple, Jedi Norsh returned to Coruscant, claiming that he had to be put on trial by the Jedi Council."

"On trial?" De-Lanna repeated wonderingly. "For what?"

The holocron answered, "For two reasons. One, for using the Jedi arts as a faculty of war. He trained one hundred and twenty-seven Mathassar in the Jedi arts and deployed them against Darth Malice's Sith forces. Two, for disobeying the will of the Jedi Council and pursuing Darth Malice in the first place. Malice would have been dealt with by a joint effort of Jedi Masters and Republic Special Forces. For these reasons, he was asked to step down from the Jedi Council."

Ascera blinked. "He was on the Council? You mean he was a Jedi Master?"

"Yes."

Something within De-Lanna's mind clicked and the discrepancy—the key to the mystery—appeared in her mental eye. "Norsh told us that he was only recently made a Jedi Knight—becoming a Master wasn't even a glimmer in his dreams. Furthermore, he claimed that the Jedi Council sent him to Mathassi for the express purpose of apprehending Malice. Also, the holocron made by Norsh's apprentice, Oda Zain, confirms both his rank and his mission. Finally, the records at the Yavin academy said that Norsh never returned from Mathassar." The brown-haired Jedi gave the holocron image a dark and penetrating look. "It seems someone's been caught in a lie."

Suddenly, the holocron's facets started changing colors, shifting from navy blue to sickly gray, to pitch black. The image of the Mathassar Jedi flickered and blurred, and De-Lanna could see the hint of a ghostly, black-robed shade beneath the snowy static.

"Darth Malice, I presume," she said grimly.

The holo reconfigured itself, revealing the Sith Lord's masked visage. Like all holos, its coloring was a dull blue. Except its eyes. Those pinholes of light were a sickly yellow. "It seems that my recording has been uncovered," the image said, drawing upon the programmed personality of Darth Malice to dictate the conversation. "Congratulations, Jedi. You must be wondering why I bothered to corrupt a Jedi holocron and implant false data within it."

"The thought had crossed our minds," Ascera answered.

"Can you not guess? The information I fabricated was for the benefit of those sniveling Mathassar who dared to believe they were Jedi. I let them have their histories and their legacies, embodied in my well-woven tale of 'Jedi Master' Norsh's fate, thus making him their great martyr, his credibility destroyed by the wonton Council for saving their lives."

"Then this was merely the first step in creating the heroic image of Dalaan Norsh that the Mathassar so revere," De-Lanna reasoned. "Their entire belief in the Jedi Order has been a Sith lie. Norsh didn't survive a confrontation with you, did he? He perished at your hands in your fortress, and you, under some manner of disguise, reported to the Mathassar that Norsh had killed you. You were the one who had the Temple built, but under the guise of Dalaan Norsh."

"Close, Jedi," the Sith Lord replied, "very close indeed. But not quite, for that logic does not explain why Norsh's body was inside the Temple—which had been expressly created to cage me."

Ascera made a cutting gesture with her hand. "No more mind games, Sith! You're just a programming. That much is clear. Just as it is also clear that there is still more to this riddle than can be gleaned from you. I have but one question."

"Ask it."

"Where is the real Darth Malice right now?"

The hologram wore a mask that covered the entire face, but De-Lanna could feel its horrid smile. "Closer than you think. Follow, young Jedi, and all will be revealed."

The image faded away, and the blackened holocron crumbled to dust.