De-Lanna let the remains of the holocron slide through her fingers. "I have a bad feeling about this," she muttered in low tones. "What is the Core Worlds is going on here?" She felt like she was lost in a great abyss of confusion, fighting against the wild currents, struggling to stay afloat and in control. But no matter her will, no matter her strength, she simply could not force the bits and pieces of information into a cohesive, logical whole.
"The answers," Ascera said confidently, "will lie with Dalaan Norsh. Of this, I am sure. Come, we have to get to the fortress. We are approaching a nexus, a climax point—the Force is strong here and swirling in ways that we can only begin to imagine. We must not resist its pull, De-Lanna, not now. The answers will come if we just trust in the Force."
"I can't say I entirely agree with that kind of thinking," the brown-haired Jedi responded dryly, "but I see no other choice. I'm grasping at straws here, but if the Force is going to give me the answers on its own sweet time, I'd rather rush right into it."
"In that regard, you're much like Ran."
"Please don't say that," De-Lanna murmured. The last thing she wanted on her mind was how similar she and that infuriatingly childish Jedi were, maddeningly gorgeous eyes or no.
But luckily, Ascera did not notice her discomfiture. The Twi'lek idly said, "Ran's not a very clever person, and he knows it, but he's surprisingly insightful. For one thing, he was right—the critical piece to this puzzle that we've been missing was in the most obvious of places. Norsh himself."
The two Jedi reunited with Ran and Norsh in the tunnel. The two men had managed to repair the speeder. Soon enough, the four were traveling at top speed down the rail track. De-Lanna and Ascera kept their experiences in the holocron library to themselves—at this point, they felt it was best to keep a trump in hand. They just had to place their trust in the Force.
The speeder eventually came to a halt at the base of a stairwell. Norsh was tense and his palms rested against his lightsaber. "This is Malice's fortress," he confirmed quietly. "The evil is still here. I sense at least twenty Quelsar dark Jedi up there."
"They are all over the place," De-Lanna observed, feeling their collective presence. "There's no way around it; this is going to be a running battle no matter what. The odds are stacked heavily against us."
Ran smiled brashly and boasted, "We can take them, odds or no odds."
"You're talking like a Corellian," Ascera noted dryly. "Have you been hanging around Master Horn again?"
"Nothing of the sort," he replied. "I'm just saying that I'm sure we'll be all right. I mean, take a look at things from this perspective: we've been friends for years, Ascera, and I've gotten us into no end of trouble—"
"You're right about that—it was all your fault," the Twi'lek quipped.
"—but we've always come out of it unscathed!" Ran finished without missing a beat. "So, logically, we should come out without a single blaster burn this time around."
Norsh laughed. "There's something skewed about that logic, young Jedi, but its refreshing to see some confidence."
De-Lanna's brows furrowed as she focused on a sensation that bothered her. "Tauth is there," she announced. "On the top floor of this place."
"So there is nothing for it," the bearded Jedi said. "We'll have to fight our way through all of the dark Jedi. We'd better go in fast and hard. At least we can try to keep surprise on our side."
Finding no alternative, De-Lanna nodded her agreement, which was followed by the others. A breath later, the four Jedi charged up the stairs and burst into the fortress, accompanied by the distinct snap-hiss of their lightsabers.
Blue, white, and red blades flashed against each other, crashing and hissing in a darkly beautiful dance of carnage and death. One by one the dark Jedi fell before them as they made their way through the fortress. They secured one stairway leading higher into the keep—they had to cut their way through the enemy throng. They turned a corner and clashed with another group—they emerged victorious. Again they climbed a stairwell, ascending ever higher, only to be accosted by yet another complement of dark Jedi. These fell before their furious onslaught. Speed was their ally, for against such numbers, it was the only tactic that would carry them safely to their goal.
They reached the top level and made their way to a pair of great iron doors, with the ferocious Quelsar right behind them. Cornered, they faced their final foes and held their ground. But in the end, their enemies lay slain to a man. The four of them sat on the ground, resting against the walls, exhausted.
"What did I tell you?" Ran gasped between gulps of air. "Got through without a scratch. Stuff of legends and all that. Sort of like that one hero, Kuman Quist, the one who fought the Dark Army of Lord Sarbaros with his magic club."
"You're mythologies never mentioned how tiring fighting an army was," De-Lanna shot back sarcastically. She wiped her brow on her sleeve. "Ascera, why do you let him speak? He's not helping us any."
The Twi'lek chuckled. "Trust me, I've tried to sedate him and it just made him more hyper. I swear, he's not human. He's got to be some alien life form we've yet to identify."
"All right, two against one is entirely unfair," Ran protested, which only excited guffaws from his female compatriots. De-Lanna felt relieved; he seemed to be back to his normal self again.
"I do believe that we have more pressing matters to be concerned about," Norsh reminded them, bringing their focus back on the mission at hand. They stood, having regained some of their strength from their brief rest. Norsh raised his hands. "These doors don't have any handles; obviously, they can only be opened telekinetically." The heavy portal opened with a bone-shivering creak, just enough for the party to enter single-file.
Within, they beheld a vast chamber filled with maps, blueprints, and box-shaped mechanical components. In the center of the room was a crumpled pile of black cloth—a robe. Next to it was a mask. De-Lanna recognized it as Darth Malice's, worn on the face of his holo.
But what arrested their attention was the man standing by the robes. Marcus Tauth glowered at them, and his hatred was heavy in the air. Lightning crackled in his eyes, giving his withered flesh a sickly coloring. "You've destroyed everything that Darth Malice created!" he roared. "I came here to learn, to master the secrets of the Sith, to revive the Dark Lord—and you crushed it all!"
Ran strode boldly toward the dark side master, igniting both ends of his lightsaber. "Give up now, Tauth, and submit yourself to justice." His voice was flat and hard, De-Lanna observed with a sinking feeling in her stomach. She could see the gray return to his eyes, the lifelessness—the readiness to take a life without a single hint of remorse. At that moment, De-Lanna realized that it was not passion, hate, or even anger that threatened Ran, but an obsession with conquering evil—an evil embodied in Tauth.
She grabbed a hold of her friend's arm, but he shrugged her off. "Ran," she whispered without pause, "calm yourself. A Jedi is always in control—even fighting evil can be overdone. You must temper yourself."
"What are you talking about?" he whispered back. He shook his head and said in a dismissive tone, "Whatever. Keep your focus on the here and now, De-Lanna. Tauth isn't to be underestimated." To Tauth, the he said, "One more warning! Surrender yourself or be destroyed."
But the dark side master was not looking at him. He was looking at Norsh. A wide, evil smile spread across the leathery face, revealing crooked and yellowed teeth. "There is yet hope for me. I had wondered in the beginning why you, a Jedi, had been placed within the Temple's cages. But now it is all clear. The technique of 'alter mind' was one of Malice's most developed skills. And the pinnacle of that skill was possession!" Grandiosely, he threw up his hands, fingers spread wide. In a great, booming voice, he intoned, "Arise, my master! Awaken from your slumber! Free yourself from the flesh of your enemy and walk this world again!"
De-Lanna felt a great blast of searing lightning strike her—lightning that originated from Norsh. She was thrown headlong into the far wall. The pain that exploded in her head was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Such raw power! Such pure energy! A bleary-eyed glance revealed that Ran and Ascera had been similarly smote. De-Lanna could smell burned flesh, hers and her friends'.
But her attention was rapt on the spectacle in the center of the room. Dalaan Norsh, glowing with lightning, the dark side pall at last fused into his being, stood with his eyes glowing. Glowing a sickly, familiar yellow. "And so I am alive once again," said Darth Malice.
"What…the…hell," groaned Ran, who was pushing himself to his feet, smoke still billowing from his burned robes. "What the hell is going on?"
Malice turned and stared down his nose at him contemptuously. "Is it not obvious? I planted the seed of my essence in the body of my greatest enemy, Dalaan Norsh. He did indeed slay me, but not before I cursed him and froze him in the freeze-coolant chamber. For two thousand years, my soul waited in the depths of his mind, waiting to be released. I only had to return to this fortress, my place of power, to regain the strength I needed to revive myself. And now, that task is done. And I could not have done it without you." The Sith Lord bowed low, claiming the fallen black robes and mask as he did so.
Realization dawned on De-Lanna as she stood, lightsaber blazing in her hands. The pieces fell into place. "So we were right. This whole thing was a sham. You probably sent some Quelsar lackey masquerading as Dalaan Norsh to the Mathassar after your 'defeat' to build the Temple. After all, what better way to protect your precious future body than by the Jedi Knights themselves? It also explains why there were Quelsar raiding the library—doubtless they were trying to revive you. They were probably alerted to your imminent return when your powers started manifesting again, like that mass telekinesis we felt on the mountainside."
"And those fabricated holocrons," Ascera added, "were just icing on the cake. With false information to circulate among the planet-bound Mathassar Jedi, you would ensure that they remained here in the Temple to defend it—at least until they all died off."
"Congratulations." The Sith Lord applauded them. "Your deductive skills are formidable. But as you can see, they do you no good here." He turned to Tauth. "You, old man, have shown great ambition to have come all the way here to learn the ways of the Sith. Your initiative will be well rewarded. As of this moment, you are my apprentice. All you must do is slay these three."
Tauth, his toothy grin growing wider with each word, exclaimed enthusiastically, "My dark master, I would slay them to please my own hatred of them! They have been quite bothersome to me." His lightsaber flashed in his hands. "I will relish this assignment. This day, I, Marcus Tauth, am a Dark Lord of the Sith!"
Suddenly, Ran sprang into the air, his double-bladed lightsaber igniting. He landed before Tauth and Malice, standing stalwartly against them. "Over my dead body," he growled fiercely. "I don't know what's going on here, but I know this much: You two aren't leaving this room alive."
At those words, delivered so chillingly and calmly, De-Lanna felt her heart grow cold. She saw Ascera's pale face and knew that she, too, felt what was in her heart: Ran's obsession with defeating Tauth and ending his evil brought him to the edge between light and dark. "He's not going to fall," she vowed to herself, forcing her aching body to action. She, too, leaped into the air, coming fast and hard on Tauth. The old man brought up his weapon to block her furious attack.
"Ran, Ascera, you've got to take down Malice!" she cried, hoping that he would do as she said. As long as Ran kept his focus on something other than Tauth, she reasoned, then he would be safe. She prayed that her logic held true.
Ran stood undecided for an instant, but then made his decision. He brought his lightsaber to bear on the Sith Lord. Ascera was soon at his side, moving to flank the black-robed warrior. But De-Lanna could not spare more than a moment on their battle; Tauth was a skilled fighter for so old a creature, and he pushed her swordsmanship to the limit. All her energy went into meeting his flurrying strikes.
"You tire," the old man crooned, "you're arms grow weary and your heart falters. Lay down your weapon and perish quickly, my dear!" He took a swipe at her head, which she ducked. De-Lanna countered with a stab of her own. He parried it away. "You'll have to do better!"
De-Lanna faced him squarely in the eye. "I've only just started." She pressed her attack, forcing their weapons into a lock. With the speed of thought, she hurled a nearby metal box at Tauth, clipping him hard across the back. He staggered and fell away, leaving an opening that the brown-haired Jedi leaped upon. She chopped at him with abandon, raining fierce blow after fierce blow.
But Tauth regained his control, turning her strongest slashes aside. He pointed his open palm at her, and she was suddenly sent flying backward into the wall, punched by his Force blast. De-Lanna moaned as pain shot up her back. Before she knew it, he was all over her, a blur of motion. It was all she could do to block his strikes. "I'm so close!" he hissed at her, drooling in his madness for power. "Soon, the secrets will be mine! I will be the greatest Sith Lord to have ever lived!"
De-Lanna spat back, "Get close to this!" Reaching through the Force, she pulled several metal boxes, tools, cables—anything that she could grab—and sent them at Tauth's exposed back. Sensing the danger, he spun around with his lightsaber arcing to cut down the impromptu missiles. But that action left him vulnerable. De-Lanna burst into motion, her white blade slashing up and down as she twirled its hilt in one hand. Tauth's lightsaber exploded in a shower of sparks, cleanly severed only centimeters from his thumb.
The old man backpedaled, keeping his distance from her. "Darth Malice!" he exclaimed, "we must retreat! They are too strong!"
De-Lanna saw that Malice, too, had met his match as far as swordplay was concerned. His weapon lay in pieces on the floor, but he held Ran and Ascera at bay with his Force lightning. The two Jedi blocked the foul energies with the glowing blades of their lightsabers. "So it seems," Malice intoned calmly. "We will leave in time, my apprentice, but I am not yet finished." Blue lightning collected between his outstretched hands. "Behold the true power of a Sith Lord!"
And suddenly, De-Lanna's world was pain.
Dark side energy, pure in its evil taint, pulverized her, scorched her flesh, burned her retinas. She could see nothing but a white haze, feel nothing but the endless torment. There was a bang nearby—a lightsaber had exploded. She could barely hear the screams of her friends above her own agonized cries.
The she heard something that sealed their fate—the sound of metal creaking. The great iron doors were sealing. Malice was trapping them in this world of pain. She would have cried if her tears did not evaporate in her eyes.
But she heard something else, something that filled her with both hope…and dread. "I won't let it end like this." It was Ran, but it did not sound like the flirtatious, hormone-raging boy who had made so many passes at her. It was not the eager, yet innocent, adventurer. It was not even the gray-eyed Jedi who walked the line between light and dark. This was a Ran who felt no hope, no life. A Ran who let his frustration and desperation seep into his voice. A Ran who was using those negative feelings to sustain himself.
De-Lanna had felt two essences of darkness: Malice and Tauth. Now she felt a third.
The door started to open again, and she felt herself moving toward them. In moments, she was lying beyond the threshold beside Ascera, who had also been telekinetically moved from the chamber of lightning. Ran stood by the doors, sealing them with his command of the Force. When the portal shut with a clang, he collapsed at its base, panting. Blood seeped from open sores on his hands and chest, staining his tunic. "I…I told you…we'd be…all right," he murmured weakly.
"Ascera and I have fought dark Jedi before," Ran told De-Lanna as she tightened a bandage around his arm, "but Sith Lords…whew, they're something else."
"You can admire our enemies later," she told him sharply. "Right now, we have slightly more important things to take care of. For one, we're way out of our league. Our best bet is to report to Master Skywalker about these developments."
Nearby, Ascera shook her head. De-Lanna was surprised; she thought the Twi'lek would see things her way. "There's an element we're neglecting," the Twi'lek said, "and that's the Sith superweapon that Dalaan Norsh discovered." She jerked a thumb at the sealed doors. "We know its real—those components. What we don't know is where it is."
"First Sith Lords, now superweapons," sighed the brown-haired Jedi. "We're really stretching it thin, Ascera. Look at us—wounded, on our last legs. That last lightning storm blew up Ran's lightsaber."
"I can just borrow one of the Quelsars' until I can make a new one," Ran countered. "As for our injuries, there's nothing a little bacta patch or two can't fix." He matched words with action and took a synthflesh patch from his utility belt and slapped it on his bleeding forearm. "Our concern should be locating this superweapon. And the only one who knows where that is Malice."
"Are you sure that this thing is real, Ascera?" De-Lanna questioned. "I mean, a superweapon's a pretty big thing. Surely we would have seen it by now with our own eyes or with our ship's sensors. Components aside, maybe he simply didn't get a chance to finish it."
"In which case, he may be going to complete it," the Twi'lek countered. "Regardless, it's obvious that our next course of action has to be stopping Malice. We can't let him run free. I don't like charging into this any more than you do, De-Lanna, but let's face it—if we were to request any additional help, it would take too long to be of any good."
De-Lanna's shoulders sank in resignation. "You're right of course. I just don't want to have to face them again. Tauth is just another dark sider, even if he's skilled. But Malice…he's just a monster." The thought of his lightning tearing through her flesh sent goosebumps along her arm.
"Rest assured, you're not the only one who thinks that," Ascera said quietly, hugging herself.
Ran stood, reaching out with the Force to draw a Quelsar's fallen lightsaber to his hand. "I want to check out that room again," he said suddenly. De-Lanna looked at him in shock. Going back into that hell was the last thing she wanted to do. Ran pressed, "Back there, I sensed Malice's presence in the Force, and my ability in that field is pretty limited. Right now, I don't feel anything, so I guess he's already gone—probably by another secret tunnel."
De-Lanna conceded mentally to his logic. She, too, felt nothing beyond those heavy doors. "But why would you want to go back in there at all?" she asked. "There's nothing there except those parts."
"I want to look at them," the green-eyed Jedi answered. "I'm not a very good mechanic, but I know a bit. And if there are any computer systems there, maybe I can slice my way in. In any case, I just want to dig around a bit, see if there's anything there that can give us a lead." He shrugged nonchalantly. "It's a stretch, but its not like we've got anything to lose except a few minutes."
Neither De-Lanna or Ascera disputed that logic, and the three entered the chamber once again. The walls and floor were scorched black by Malice's lightning, a testimony to his awesome power. De-Lanna shivered again, but Ran just dove into the litter of boxes and parts. Ascera assisted him, crouching at his side and sifting through cables and circuit boards.
De-Lanna felt a bit out of place, having neither the mechanical experience nor the computer expertise that her comrades demonstrated. She idly examined this or that piece of equipment, tossed it aside, and picked up another without really knowing what she was holding. Then she pushed aside a W-shaped condenser unit, revealing a datapad underneath. Curious, she turned the device on and scrolled through its menus. Her eyes widened.
"Ran, Ascera," she breathed excitedly, "I found the schematics of the superweapon—and where its being built."
Over the next hour, the Jedi trio poured over the datapad, transferring its information to Ascera's own datapad. Between the two devices, they discerned the superweapon's dark purpose. Under the codename Poison Star, the superweapon was designed to be a planet-killer. But no obtuse blast of energy was its sword—something far more sinister was its killing touch.
The Poison Star would launch a great missile of Sith alchemical toxins that would detonate in the atmosphere of a world. Planetary atmosphere and wind currents would carry the toxins across the globe, causing molecular degeneration in every living entity. Flesh would peel, scales would rot, lungs would melt. It would take hours, perhaps days, for the infected to die. The toxins were even more poetic in their dark methodology: those in top physical health would take even longer to die, thus extending their suffering to as long as a week or even a month. All would die in unspeakable agony as they were destroyed from the inside out.
"Horrible," De-Lanna whispered unbelievingly as she read the vile account. "How could anyone create such a thing?"
"Ask Emperor Palpatine," Ascera said dryly. "But look at this. The Poison Star requires a vast amount of dark side energy to operate. Without it, it can only reach sublight speeds. It would be hyperdrive incapable."
The brown-haired Jedi blinked in sudden understanding. "Darth Malice came to Mathassi to secure some kind of energy nexus. This must be what he needed it for!"
"So he must be going for that nexus," Ran reasoned. "If we get there first, or at least catch up to him, we can shut down his superweapon without even going to it. But where on earth is the nexus?"
Ascera smiled thinly. "Who else would know the terrain of a world than its native people?"
They took the underground speeder back to the Jedi Temple in silence, brooding over their discovery…and their fears. When they returned to their ship, De-Lanna kept a close eye on Ran as he brought the transport through its warm-up cycles. The dark side was in him, she knew, a small kernel of blackness—a testimony to his desperation in Malice's fortress. He had used his frustration and rage to save them from certain doom, but at what terrible cost?
Outwardly, he had regained his usual cheery demeanor, which struck her as odd. She had always suspected that once the dark side had a hold, it would forever dominate the fallen's destiny. But Ran acted as he normally did: friendly, slightly irritating, yet a warm and comforting presence to be around. He made jokes, some of them lewd and immature, obviously trying to keep everyone's thoughts from their defeat at the hands of Darth Malice and the danger looming before them.
But the blackness was in him, and she could feel it like a tiny bit of rust on an otherwise unblemished ship.
In no time at all, the transport lumbered into the Mathassar village, it's landing cycles kicking up snow and gravel. It came to a stop and the landing ramp went down. De-Lanna saw Zeth'Irak, the Speaker of the village, waiting for them at the bottom.
"And so the Jedi return once more," the diminutive Mathassar said, "and with great adventure at their backs, else these tattered garments you wear tell a lie."
"We met your demon," De-Lanna explained, pushing up the charred flaps of his shredded tunic to a more serviceable angle. "And we learned that he plans to activate a weapon of immeasurable power. This world may be one of its first targets."
Zeth'Irak nodded, taking the news with calm and thoughtfulness. "The Great Change has begun," he murmured with finality. "Though it bodes ill for us all."
"Your Angel from Heaven came here two thousand years ago to tap into some kind of energy nexus," Ascera said. She stood tall and confident and the wounds upon her face and clothes seemed like a noble's garment, so strong was her presence. "If you have any idea of what this nexus might be, please tell us. Our only chance of stopping him is to keep him from getting that energy."
Again, the Mathassar nodded. "I know of what you speak. There is a holy place on this world, sacred to both Mathassar and Quelsar. It is called the Well of Creation, for it is our shared belief that we were born from it."
"Tell us about this Well."
"In ages past, long before the demon came to this world, there was only the Well, and its energies were in balance—both good and evil, weal and woe. From the clean waters came the Mathassar, from the putrid came the Quelsar, and so were we infused with wisdom and violence respectively. But as with the mixing of liquids, some of the putrid entered the clean, and some of the clean entered the putrid. And this is why all living beings are capable of both good and evil.
"When the Quelsar joined with the demon and learned his ways, the Well of Creation became purely clean, for they were no longer of the Well. They followed another mandate."
Ran's brows furrowed. "That of the Sith."
Zeth'Irak continued, "Since then, we have guarded the clean waters as part of our rituals. Once every full moon, we send our young to protect it and watch over it. None are to taste of its waters or to disturb its surface, for so long as the Well remains immaculate, mysterious magic can be drawn from it. Visions are seen by those who guard the waters."
"This sounds like a concentration of light side energy," Ascera reasoned. She turned to her fellow Jedi. "But what use could Malice have in a light side nexus?"
"One way to find out," said De-Lanna. She looked imploringly at the Mathassar. "Master Zeth'Irak, please let us watch over the Well. Darth Malice…the demon…will surely go there."
The Mathassar closed his eyes. "Tonight is the full moon. This meeting is no coincidence. I grant you your wish. Walk along the northern path, and it will take you to the sacred Well of Creation. Be vigilant, for if the waters are disturbed, then its magic spell doom for you."
The three Jedi bowed to the Speaker and took the path. It was a primitive dirt road, hidden by the trees for miles upon miles; finding a landing spot for their ship would have been impossible. It was small comfort to them that Darth Malice would have to travel on foot as well.
Ran pressed on like a man possessed, shoving his way through the underbrush and once even igniting his stolen lightsaber to slash down a large tree so that he could pass. De-Lanna shivered at the sight of the green-eyed Jedi wielding a Sith lightsaber with such confidence and ease. When Ran was a little farther ahead, she grabbed a hold of Ascera's sleeve. "We have to do something," she whispered. "He's falling farther and farther away."
The Twi'lek nodded, her face ashen and stiff. "I know. I can feel him. He's ignoring all the confusion and doubt in his heart and focusing entirely on the mission. He's trying to cope, but its not working. All its doing is making him feed on his anger."
"What does he have to be angry about?" De-Lanna wondered, truly concerned and confused.
"Nothing," Ascera answered. "It's all in his head. Tauth must have said something to him when they first fought, something that triggered those doubts about himself, about the Jedi, about everything. I feel…I feel that he's looking for the answers, but that the only solution lies in cutting down Tauth—destroying the element that made him so confused in the first place. Anger is just the fuel for his actions."
"Doesn't sound like a good reason to be falling to the dark side," De-Lanna said quietly.
"Ran is a very emotional person, very passionate," the Twi'lek explained. "Instinct and emotion are more important to him than reasons. They kept him in good stead for a long while, all his life, even. But now it is failing him."
"Is there nothing we can do?"
Ascera was quiet for a long, painful moment. "This is something he has to work out on his own."
The brown-haired Jedi also grew quiet. She felt helpless, a fly on the wall watching her friend fall apart. "Ascera, aren't you worried that your bond with him will cause you to fall, too?"
The Twi'lek's movements became stiffer. "I can feel the darkness eating at me, encouraging to grow like a cancer because I'm concerned about him. That concern is being turned into fear, into desperation, anger at being unable to do anything." Her tone, usually so cool and collected, grew hotter with each breath.
De-Lanna grasped her arm and said, "There is no passion, there is serenity." Ascera immediately calmed, the litany seemingly dissipating the building frustration within her. "Are you all right?"
The Twi'lek nodded shakily. "I'm sorry. It seems I need better control over myself."
"Your bond with Ran must be strong indeed."
"Is that a hint of jealousy I hear?" the Twi'lek said with a small grin.
De-Lanna turned a light shade of pink at the implication. "Not in the slightest. It was just a comment. Regardless, we should keep a close eye on our friend over there. He's already gotten too far ahead. Damn, but he just doesn't quit, does he?" She and Ascera had to jog to catch up to Ran. They passed by the stumps of severed trees and vines and other foliage and debris. He kept on pushing forward, cutting himself a path.
They walked for three days, resting only for brief periods of rest and food. Ran maintained a grueling pace, which De-Lanna and Ascera quietly accepted. Though he joked to keep their spirits up, De-Lanna could sense the falsity in his cheerful facade, for his attention was always focused on the road ahead—and the dark side masters who lay at its end.
The further he slipped to the dark side, the more De-Lanna's desperation increased. She found herself missing the old Ran, as infuriating as he was. Back then, the pranks were not some sad attempt at maintaining an amicable disposition, but a true, honest method of lightening a grim atmosphere. Even his juvenile passes at her were just another way for him to draw a few laughs from his friends. Looking at Ran now, his face set, obsession boiling off him in waves, the dark side growing within…De-Lanna made a second silent vow to protect him, to prevent him from falling completely.
She prayed that she could do it.
