A/N: It's a Leap Day miracle! Enjoy.

The door slid open to reveal a darkened hallway lined with mirror-smooth tiles on floor, ceiling, and walls. In the beckoning space between them, the world warped and faded.

So far as Ben understood it, thanatosine was not so much a geological entity itself, but an ephemeral, illusive something forged deep in the hearts of planets that found its way to the surface in the form of igneous rock, disguised by as many shapes and colors as nature allowed.

The last time Ben had encountered thanatonsine, it had been dark and aged, unpolished for centuries, sat at the foundations of the Jedi Ziggurat on Coruscant. The mirror-smooth white that lined this hallway was unlike it in every way, but the feeling in his gut was just the same. Ben had only ever known a handful of Jedi who understood what life felt like cut off from the Force. Imagining the sensation was like trying to imagine going about your day without breathing, without your own heartbeat. It was impossible to understand until you experienced it for yourself. He glanced back to make sure Aola was behind him. Her saber was clenched in her fist. Good. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Rather than brace him, his breath immediately left him in a rush, and with it, everything else. The background symphony of life that he'd known since before his first memories disappeared in an instant, and in its wake, silence. Where once was calm, resolve, and power, he felt nothing. The most instinctual parts of his mind told him to panic, but he resisted. After a few steps, he leaned against the wall to catch his breath.

The door closed behind them.

"What is it?" Aola's voice was sharp and shaking. Though he could not see her face, much less sense her, Ben could hear her terror. "I can't feel the Force."

"As I said, unpleasant." The master forced a smile, trying to lighten the mood. He pushed off the wall and dusted his hands. The hallway was long and sloped downwards, large patches of darkness waiting between sparsely placed halo lamps.

"As for what it is, I suppose it must be the remnants of an ancient shrine, or perhaps the heart of a dying planet." Ben proceded at a slow pace, running a hand along the white wall. "No one really knows where thanatosine comes from; it's rarer than kyber, all known specimens are more ancient than the oldest Jedi texts."

"But what is it?" Aola was squinting into the dim light. "And why the hell would anyone want to build a room with it?" Ben considered the wall more closely.

"It's a kind of rock that, for reasons that science cannot explain, exudes a field around itself, not unlike the way kyber crystals do. However, where kyber crystals amplify the Force, thanatosine blocks it almost entirely."

"The opposite of kyber," Aola remembered him saying. Ben shrugged.

"I don't know how else to describe it. Even non-sensitive beings are unnerved by it, though they don't comprehend why." He looked around them, admiring the shine of the tiles in the dim light. "In ancient times, both Jedi and Sith used it; for themselves and against each other. Prisons, shrines, even training devices—at least, that's what I've read." Ben spared Aola a glance, and was grateful to see that this paltry explanation had assuaged her fear. They needed to keep moving. "We could use some more light here." He ignited his lightsaber, and the room was suddenly awash with blue. With the light came a calm: weak and thin, but in the abyss of the thanatosine, it was a beacon.

"Your sabers will take off the edge," Ben explained to Aola. "Their kyber won't be affected, even in here. Keep them close." Aola followed his lead and ignited one of her sabers, which she held ahead of her as a torch as they advanced.

The hallway was long and dark, with a ceiling shorter than that of the halls they'd taken to arrive here. As they travelled further in, the polished white stone gave way to a patchwork of thanatosine of all different shades and sizes. Grey, black, green, red, blue, bricks and boulders, tiles and huge slabs. The architects must have had to source the material from all of the galaxy, wherever they could find sufficient supply. Ben could not imagine how long it must've taken to collect it all.

"They must be using the stone to hide something down here," Aola said quietly. "More kyber?"

"I don't know." Ben really didn't. Memories surfaced of a mission he'd run with Anakin a lifetime ago: Separatists attempting to move the largest single kyber crystal anyone had ever seen, meant for some kind of superweapon—probably the Death Star, he now realized. Was that what they were hiding in this mountain beneath a prison of thanatosine? A giant crystal? Then again, if they had such a thing, why the need to accumulate more? Why extort Panche? Had they extorted others, too? To what end? Why Alderaan?

"Whatever it is," Ben said at length, "it must be precious indeed."

"And Force-sensitive," Aola added.

"-ster, come in, please, if you—r me—n't—ppeared." Obi-Wan's voice emerged in heavy static from Ben's comm. The master stopped and plucked it from his belt.

"Obi-Wan," he spoke into it, shuffling around to find a spot with the best signal, "what's happened?" The static let up in waves so that Ben could hear the younger Kenobi's reply:

"Anakin says he can't sense yo—Cody is asking for your—ently your—ola's signals to base have died—n't reach you."

"The walls here seem to block all kinds of signals," Ben explained, glancing at Aola. "It may be some kind of cloaking mechanism."

"We're fine, Obi," Aola put in. "But I doubt we'll be reachable from here on out."

"If we can't reach you, and you need extractio—" the knight began, and was cut off by static.

"I know, Obi-Wan," Ben said, and adjusted his grip on the comm. "Can you put my apprentice on the line?"

Ben was afraid the signal must've cut out entirely, until he heard Anakin say nervously:

"Master?"

"You can't sense me because I'm in that room, the one where you said was a giant gap. I can explain later, but for now you need to keep your anxiety in check."

"What kind of gap is it? Did y—yber? I can't seem to—"

"Anakin, listen to me." They didn't have time for this. The line fell quiet. "How certain are you that we need to investigate this 'gap'?"

It was quiet again, and Ben wondered if the question had made it through, but then Anakin said:

"Completely."

Ben wouldn't question it.

"And do you have any idea what is down here?"

"No, neither do—rbee. I jus—ow that it's important. Really important." The feverish urgency in his apprentice's voice didn't do anything to put Ben at ease, but it steeled his nerve nonetheless.

"We will find whatever it is, but you may not be able to sense me, or reach me. In the meantime, I want you to listen to Obi-Wan as if he were me. He is the mission leader. Where he leads, you follow. If he tells you to do something, you do it. Do you understand?"

There was a pause on the other end. Quietly, Anakin said, "Yes, master."

"Good. Look after each other. May the Force be with you both."

"And with you as well, master."

Ben took a step forward, and the line returned to static. He and Aola pressed on.

Obi-Wan had a very bad feeling.

It wasn't the same feeling he usually got on these types of missions, that creeping, elusive chill on the back of his neck. This was more like a sudden flood of water around his ankles, surging, rising quickly.

We came here for kyber, to retrieve it and bring it back. But… he glanced at Anakin, who still had his eyes closed, hand pressed firm against the wall. The boy was shaking, brow pulled firm over his eyes. Tracks of dried blood stained his mouth, trickling from each nostril to his chin.

A web, that's what Anakin had called it. Obi-Wan had felt it himself, at the door. The kyber here wasn't hoarded and stored like cargo. It was used for energy, for electricity, and for what else? There was no way to tell. They were only four Jedi strong—two, now that Ben and Aola were unreachable. With no reinforcements on the way, the mission was now more dangerous than Obi-Wan had anticipated in even his worst-case abstractions. The walls were closing in, and they were alone. We need to get out of here.

"Anakin," he said. No response. He glanced down at RB-1, who blipped out a droidish shrug. Obi-Wan adjusted his grip on the droid and put a hand gingerly on Anakin's shoulder. "Anakin."

"Hmm?" The teen didn't open his eyes.

"Has Ben ever run through memory drills with you?"

"Of course. Why?"

"We're not going to be able to recover any of this kyber, it's too ingrained in this place. I need you to memorize as much about this place as you can. Can you do that?"

Anakin inhaled and released it shakily. He did not want to tell Obi-Wan that he'd only ever memorized small maps, or that his mind already felt fit to burst.

"Alright," he said.

"Good." Obi-Wan could tell the kid was overwhelmed. And you didn't want him to come, a small voice said in his head. And now everything you'll get out of this mission depends on him, because you're powerless to help him. The Force had a way of humbling its servants.

"And you, Arbee," Obi-Wan glanced down at the droid, who groaned. "Download any schematics you can without overloading yourself."

The droid blipped tiredly but began buzzing away. Obi-Wan thought reflectively that it was the first time that Arbee had ever obeyed him without complaining. He adjusted his grip on the droid and looked back up at Anakin.

"Can you sense where Padme and Rex are?"

"They haven't moved," Anakin told him. "They're still in that room."

"Guarded?"

"I think so."

Obi-Wan pursed his lips. "We may not be able to retrieve any kyber, but there's no reason to leave them with more. They need to get back to Panche's ship and get out of here. As soon as they move, if they move, tell me."

"Yes, Master," Anakin said on pure reflex. It sent a shiver up Obi-Wan's spine.

They had been waiting for what felt like years. Padme knew it'd only been about half an hour, but somewhere around the twenty minute mark, the mental tunnel vision had set in and her sense of time began to race apace of the adrenaline she was trying desperately to keep in check, lest she start fidgeting.

Padme was not a stranger to working under pressure or even under cover. As Naboo's teenaged queen, she'd lived most of her life under both. It'd given her an intimate understanding of volatile situations and how these things tended to escalate. She'd been keenly aware of the exact minute their kyber sale negotiation had become a hostage situation, but she had no idea why it had happened or how they were going to get out of it.

She glanced at Rex, and wondered if he understood why they'd been left alone so long.

The fight or flight instincts were telling her to kick these two guards in their teeth, to steal one of their long guns, and to shoot her way out, but she tamped down the urge. Not for the first time in her life, she envied the Jedi's ability to communicate telepathically; she'd always been too embarrassed to ask Obi-Wan if that particular rumor were true, though she hoped dearly it held some grain of truth now. Even if she were in the dark, at least the Jedi would be able to communicate with each other.

Rex's expression was unreadable, and he refused to look at her. When the Stone Woman returned, Padme's adrenaline kicked into high gear, but the urge to fidget seemed to have made a full circle back around to composure. She sat up straight and tilted up her chin, and reminded herself too late that she was playing a bounty hunter, not a queen. She let her head fall at a jaunty angle at the last second.

"Well?" she asked loudly, breaking the silence. "Do we have a deal?"

The rest of the room remained as a tableau; Rex and the two guards staring straight ahead, Padme staring at the Stone Woman, the Stone Woman staring back. There was something new in her eyes, Padme saw, something she thought she recognized from somewhere, but couldn't place. She didn't like it.

"My superiors have a few questions regarding your price," the woman said, looking down at her guest with thinly-veiled contempt. "Please, if you'll follow me,"

Padme let her glare linger a few seconds before she got to her feet, dragging her boots in annoyance. Now that Hyla knew this woman wasn't truly in charge, she wouldn't let herself appear intimidated. Inside, Padme wanted to flee.

"Alright then," Hyla drawled, stuffing her hands in her pockets. She glanced at Rex, and the clone dutifully fell in step beside her. They left the room, and the two guards followed them. Inside the room, they'd worn their long blasters down one shoulder, a single hand resting along a strap near the handle. Now, they carried them across their bodies, two-handed and ready.

Their escorts guided them past one set of blast doors, and then two, deeper into the gut of the mountain. As they waited for a third set of doors to open, Padme shot a glance at her companion, and for the first time that mission, Rex's expression spoke loud and clear.

We have to get out of here. Now.

No, Padme moved her head microscopically left to right. We need to see how far this goes.

Rex followed her lead. However, the next time they passed under a bulkhead shadowy enough for him to hide his movements, he reached down and flipped off the safety to both of his blasters.

"They're moving," Anakin said.

Obi-Wan looked up at him. He'd been negotiating with Arbee on what type of data qualified as 'important' and shushed the droid halfway through a sentence.

"Padme and Rex?"

"And their guards," Anakin confirmed.

"Where are they going?'

Anakin's brow pulled down tight over his eyes in focus. "Further in," he said. "They're being escorted by someone new."

"Do you recognize them?"

Anakin tried to get a good read, and was perplexed when he could not. "No… I don't know. It's like… like they're shielded."

It was Obi-Wan's turn to frown. "Shielded how?"

Anakin had a sinking feeling in his gut. "In the Force," he murmured.

Aola had gained more perspective on the Force in the last ten minutes than she had in perhaps her entire life. Is this what life is like for non sensitives? Desolate and terrifying? It wasn't a fair question. Ben had said that even non-sensitives would feel unnerved by thanatosine—but the black hole in her belly surpassed 'unnerving'. She felt like a newborn akk pup, blind and helpless, and very alone. Her own breath echoed in her lungs. She could feel her own heartbeat, see it in the corners of her eyes, feel the blood and adrenaline pulsing in her finger tips, but she couldn't feel a single atom of it in the Force. We can't stay here long, I'll go mad. She looked at Ben, wondering if he felt the same way. She'd begun clenching her jaw some time ago, and couldn't find the wherewithal to relax it. We have to get out of here. Ben had slowed ahead of her.

"What's this?" the master whispered into the quiet. Aola looked over his shoulder and could see the doorway just ahead. Like a tunnel into a vast cavern, the low hallway had led them to a room that stretched out to their right, the furthest wall shrouded in blackness, the unlit ceilings almost disappearing above them.

Unlike the bare hallway they'd been following for not quite a quarter mile, the room appeared to be furnished. It had a padded floor, at least—just mats over the thanatosine foundation, Aola could tell without having to investigate. She took a step in after Ben, and had to stop momentarily.

"It's worse here," she said, pressure on her chest as though they were deep beneath the ocean. "The thanatosine. It's… darker, here. How can it have gotten worse?"

Ben was looking at his lightsaber, and then up and around them, as if he'd heard a ghost. "I don't know," he muttered. If Aola hadn't already been at her nerve's end, his tone might've alarmed her even more.

The knight ignited her second saber, desperate for the light, that of the blade and that of the kyber. This extra illumination helped her see that the room did indeed have furniture within. All of it was kept to the very edges of the room, a table here, a cabinet there, all of it bolted down. The majority of the room was dominated by a broad and thinly cushioned mat, utilitarian and rough. As they crossed the expanse, a dark stain beneath their feet caught Aola's eye. She looked at it, and around them, and noticed more stains dotting the floor in unusual patterns. Some looked like liquid, others like soot.

"What is this place?" she asked aloud. Ben was looking at the stained mat, too. In the violet hues of their combined lightsabers, it was impossible to tell if it was blood or something else.

"It almost looks like…" Aola turned in place, lightsabers humming as she tried to frame the image in her mind. "It almost looks like a dojo," she said. "Like on Coruscant."

Ben did not reply. He was following the feeling of a ghost across the hall, to one of the cabinets that stood along the wall. As he drew closer, the comfort of his lightsaber seemed to wane, almost rebel against another tendril that competed for his attention in this Force-forsaken place. The cabinet door creaked when he opened it, and he took a full step back.

"That's because it is," he said.

Aola turned to see what Ben meant, just as he raised his saber to illuminate the rows of shining, battle-worn hilts mounted on racks within the cabinet, arranged in neat rows by half dozen. Ben did not need to touch a single one to know what they were, or to know that they would all shine a bright, bleeding red.

"So this 'superior' of yours," Hyla said, earning an annoyed glance back from the Stone Woman ahead of her. She forced a grin. "They're rich, right?"

"Yes." The woman surprised Padme with a reply. Padme could see just one of her eyes as she glared at Padme over her shoulder, but even that single eye held more ice than the entire mountain. The woman turned back around, ash white hair falling back into place. "He has a few questions for you, though." 'He', was it? Rex and Padme glanced at each other as they were led around a corner. When they looked ahead, both of them froze.

There were four cloaked figures waiting for them by a door. The Stone Woman went to join them as the door slid open to reveal a bright, bare room with a single chair bolted to the floor.

"Please, have a seat," the woman said, eyes perceptive and cold as a hawk as she turned to face them. The blasters of the guards behind them whirred and clicked, and Padme knew without looking that one was trained on her, the other on Rex. The Stone Woman gestured to the door and let her eyes bore down harder on Padme.

"After you… Senator." As her arm moved away from her side, Padme caught sight of a unique silhouette outlined on her belt. Her heart skipped a beat.

Not too long after Aola's knighting ceremony, after Obi-Wan had absconded to the Outer Rim with no warning and no further explanation than a hastily-composed note, Ben had gone to console his old master.

"I only worry what trouble he might find out there," Qui-Gon had confided. "And whether he'll be able to face it alone, after all that has happened."

"He will honor your teachings. You've raised him capably," Ben had told him, and had been confused when Qui-Gon's frown had grown deeper, his eyes far off.

"So I have. It's only… I've heard rumors. From Dex. Other channels, as well."

"What kind of rumors?"

Qui-Gon hadn't known how to classify them, and had only been able to tell Ben what Dex had told him, all those years ago in his diner before Geonosis.

"Where did they get those?" Aola's voice sounded as Ben's had, years ago—shaken and horrified.

"Stolen sabers, stolen kyber…" Ben looked up at the veritable armoury, and all that it implied. "Corrupted kyber. If that's what they're hiding here.."

"There have to be three dozen there," Aola said, and looked around. There were two other cabinets that she could see. "Are they all stolen?"

"More likely made," Ben said, reaching out to take one saber off the wall. He could feel the raging heart of the saber even unignited. It was not ornamental, that was for sure. It looked dangerous, used—and used often. He looked back up at the others and saw the same patina of aggression. Three dozen. He looked and saw the other cabinets, wondered how many dojos they'd hidden beneath the mountain. Hidden on Alderaan. On Naboo. Spread out across the galaxy, tentacles of a network vast enough to reach the black markets of Geonosis, to filter into the contacts of Dexter Jettster, to entrap a feeble miner and his sister to fuel more kyber into its unhinged maw.

"By whom?" Aola's question fell on deaf ears.

Ben strode past her and flung open the second cabinet. It was the same: racks upon racks of well-used lightsabers. Some of them were saberstaffs.

"Ben, if the owners of those sabers are here—if even a few of them are here–" Aola's panic was full-grown.

Ben moved on toward the third cabinet, already fearful of what new variants it might hold, but stopped suddenly when something caught his eye. He raised his saber to illuminate what he'd seen.

"–out of here and report this all to the council immediately. There aren't enough Jedi on Alderaan—hell, in the whole parsec—to–"

"Where do you suppose this goes?" Ben interrupted. Aola came over to inspect the door. It was solid thanatosine, latched not by electronics, but by a durasteel latch. It wasn't even padlocked.

"I don't want to find out," Aola told him. "I want to get out of here." Ben stared at the latch. Aola looked at him, at the door. Back at him.

"Master Ben," she couldn't believe that she had to explain this to him, "we need to leave."

"Anakin said this place was important—we need to find out why."

"We already have—it's a bleeding Sith dojo." Aola spread her arm in a demonstrative arc, lightsabers' glow dancing off of the cabinets left hanging open.

"There's more," Ben said, not knowing if it were really true. He could not feel the Force here, could not verify the twist in his gut against the better judgement of Its will. But he'd heard bizarre tremors in Anakin's voice moments ago, echoes of an ancient instinct Ben hadn't been wise enough to trust in a past life. He refused to make that mistake again. He placed his hand on the smooth stone door, attempting to sense something, anything on the opposite side. Expecting nothing, he was surprised with the tiniest tendril of life flickered back at him.

"Master Ben," Aola said, as he reached for the latch on the door. He did not heed her. "Master," she repeated, "there's only two of us, if they know we're here, we won't stand a–" She stopped mid-sentence, because the door had swung open. Out of the nothingness that surrounded them, both Jedi were suddenly aware of another cluster of life: life in incredible, immeasurable pain.

"Kriff," Anakin said, which drew Obi-Wan's attention.

The knight did not have time to ask what had happened, because at that exact moment, the hallway was awash with a flashing red light, and klaxons sounded overhead.

"Well," the apprentice announced, "they're on the move."

Padme ran full tilt alongside Rex, holding one of his blasters in front of her and firing at anything that got in their way.

She couldn't have said who'd made the first move. She and Rex hadn't had the opportunity to concoct an actual plan. But when Padme ducked and lunged for one of the guard's blasters, Rex had taken the opportunity to draw his own guns and began firing. Then, they'd started running, pursuers not far behind.

Padme was fairly certain it had been the Stone Woman who'd yelled, "Bring them back, now!" but her voice had been so different than before, so wild and angry, that if someone were to claim it had been another woman entirely, Padme would have believed them.

"Careful!" Rex shouted. Padme ducked just in time to miss the shot of the security droid that continued to barrel toward them. Rex shot it with an expert's aim and felled it just in time for Padme to jump over its legs.

"Comm Obi-Wan and warn him," Padme huffed, "we've outstayed our welcome."

Rex tapped his earpiece as he continued racing down the unfamiliar halls. "Master Kenobi, come in. We've been compromised."

"-ster Kenobi, come in. We've been compromised."

Obi-Wan nearly dropped Arbee in his haste to reach his comm.

"I gather you two are the reason for the red alert." He mustered a casual air despite the ambient chaos. "Are you armed?"

"At the moment, yes." Rex sounded winded. "But a pistol each is hardly enough to take on a whole garrison—platoon—army—whatever the hell this place is." The sound of blasterfire momentarily took over the line. Obi-Wan waited for it to pass.

"Get back to the ship, get off this mountain," Obi-Wan ordered. "We need to get everyone out of here."

"They know who I am," Padme shouted to be heard across the line. "Where are Ben and Aola?"

"Let me worry about that. Do you know where you are?" More blasterfire.

"No. This place is like a maze," Padme said. "The red alert seems to have triggered sentinel droids. Some have blasters. Some have vibrostaffs."

"The droids are the least of our problems," Rex put in.

"What do you mean?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Kriffing–dammit! Go, go! That way," Rex's voice faded in and out, comm piece jostled by his running.

"Lieutenant? Come in, lieutenant?" Obi-Wan gripped the comm tighter.

Across the line, he could hear the dull but unmistakable hum of a lightsaber.

This time, he actually did drop Arbee. The ball's hull clanked to the floor and he rolled away with a yell. Obi-Wan looked up at the droid's master.

"Anakin," he snapped.

"They're going the wrong way," the apprentice said. Obi-Wan went over to him and pressed the comm into the hand that wasn't occupied.

"Tell them where to go. Clear a path. Do whatever you can to get them back to that ship."

"What about you?" Anakin wanted to open his eyes and see his friend's face, but he felt that if he did, his grasp on the mountain would collapse and bring him with it.

"I'm going to help them. They're being pursued—by a Sith, I think. I intend to find them and stop them."

"You're going alone?" Anakin panicked.

"I can't help you here, and right now, you're our best bet of getting out of here alive." They both knew it; Obi-Wan was just the one who said it. "I'll find the Sith and draw them away from Padme and Rex. Once they're with the ship, go back the way we came and wait outside for the extraction team to arrive for you."

"What about Master Ben? What about you?"

"Anakin," Obi-Wan began, and stopped. Anakin was far too old to believe the placating lies Obi-Wan wanted to tell him. He tried to think about things the way Ben did.

"The Force has us in Its grasp as much as It ever did," he told the apprentice. "Trust in It. Ben, Aola, and I will do the same. There's nothing more to be done for us right now. But you need to get Padme and Rex to that ship. Can you do that?"

Anakin squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, and a few stay tears escaped. Whether they were from stress or something more, no one could say. He nodded his head, not trusting himself with words.

Obi-Wan looked down at Arbee, who had righted himself and was smoking lightly from the exertion of downloading petabytes of datafiles.

"Arbee, do you have any armaments?" Obi-Wan knew the droid had been a training device, before Anakin had gotten his hands on it. Even the smallest Jedi trainers had blasters. The droid blipped an affirmative, and five slots in its hull clicked open to reveal five tiny blaster barrels. Whether they would be good for anything but training younglings, Obi-Wan could not say. He glared down at Arbee's optic sensor.

"Protect him," he ordered, and for the second time in their shared experience, Arbee One logged a directive of Kenobi, O. W. without hesitation.

"Close all the doors leading here when I leave," Obi-Wan told Anakin as he unclipped his saber and strode down the hall. "May the Force be with us."

Aola didn't know what she had feared would be on the other side when Ben had opened the door. Had she thought there would be a Sith waiting in a broom cupboard, ready to attack any Jedi who somehow wandered inside? Had she thought it would hide more lightsabers? Another dojo? Whatever nightmares Aola's unsettled mind could've come up with, a prison was the last thing that would have come to mind.

She could not see them, but she knew there were other people in the room. Six—maybe seven—others waited somewhere in the blackness, filled with anger and rage and hate, but above all, blinding pain and despair.

Ben stood so close his shoulders brushed hers, magnifying the already claustrophobic quarters. He held his lightsaber out in front so the blue caught the edges of the durasteel bars that surrounded them. The room ahead was long and narrow, lined with cells on both sides. Hesitantly, Aola raised a saber to inspect the cell on her right. A living figure shrunk back from the light, squinting and curling in on themselves.

"Force," she nearly choked. "B-Ben," she said, looking up at the master with horror.

"I see them," Ben said, frozen in place right beside her. He scanned the cells all around them and followed the durasteel bars down, down, down toward the end of the room. His eyes landed there, and the air in his lungs hitched. Moving with sudden urgency, he marched toward the end of the room. The light of his saber drew attention from more prisoners, who groaned or hissed as the light blinded them. Aola watched their grimy forms shrink away as Ben passed, felt their anger and terror, and struggled to classify what they'd found hidden in this hell of stone.

"Who are they?" Aola asked the air. "What is this place?"

Ben did not know how to answer. He reached the end of the hall and found the glint of light he'd spotted. Set into the wall within a specially designed triangular nook was a holocron. Even looking at it was difficult. The device itself seemed to vibrate and blur, pulsing with immense, raw power that Ben had never seen in Jedi holocrons. It was darkness in physical form, tortured and ancient. And yet… it was the only thing in the room that connected him to the Force. It was louder than the life around him, louder than Aola, louder than his saber or the kyber that lived in the heart of the armory that lay behind. It infused the air itself with stale rage, and Ben had no choice but to breathe it, because there was nothing else.

They had to get it out of here, and destroy it. Ben tore it out of the wall and pocketed it.

"Kyber," croaked a voice, and Ben was startled to feel a hand reach out and bump his thigh. Overgrown fingernails dug into his robe, tethering him to the spot. "Please," the voice begged, "please, kyber."

Ben tried to pull himself away, but the grip held fast. The Jedi looked down to see a man strained against the bars of his cell, one fist full of Ben's robe, the other reaching full length toward his ignited lightsaber. His eyes were wide, whites cast manic blue in the glow of Ben's saber. Ben yanked his robe away and the man scrambled for new purchase. He grabbed hold of the confiscated Sith saber that hung on Ben's belt.

"No!" The Jedi tried to snatch it back, but clutched the air too late.

The man cradled the saber to himself, but then he took a better look at it, and dropped it as though it were burning. He looked back up at Ben and fell back toward the bars, reaching out once again toward the shining blue in Ben's right hand.

"Kyber," he repeated in a broken cry, the Sith saber lying ignored on the floor of his cell. Tears were streaming down the man's face. "Please." He looked like a starving dog begging for food. "Please." Ben met eyes with the man, rooted to the spot. "You're bound to- you have to-" the prisoner swallowed thickly, sounding parched "You're Jedi."

Whispers of "Jedi," began to move around the cells, hissing, cutting the silence like a knife. "Jedi. They're Jedi."

"Get away from him!" Aola darted to Ben's side, smacking the prisoner's groping hand away.

"They're Force sensitive," Ben told her.

"What?"

"The thanatosine," Ben realised aloud. "It's a prison. They've been kept down here surrounded by thanatosine, with no Force to hold onto but this," Ben held up the shining holocron. Aola's expression went wide.

"Is that—?"

"Jedi," the prisoner could see Aola's tabards up close. "Master, your kyber." His eyes were fixated on the hilts of Aola's sabers, tears illuminated by the humming blades. "Please, please." The man repeated the word over and over, like a chant, a kata, a plea. "Please, masters," his voice was shaking and raw from disuse. His fingertips strained desperately toward the blue light. "Please."

"We need to get them out of here," Ben said, pocketing the holocron once again, as if hiding its light would hide its effect on them all. "Look at them."

Aola was. They were all straining at the bars, now, staring, some reaching. All starving—for food or for the Force, or both, it was impossible to distinguish. "Jedi," they said, some quietly, some hissing, some croaking. "Jedi."

While the Jedi sought out the faces of the whispering captives, a metallic rattling sound went unnoticed for several vital seconds, until the pleading prisoner seemed to notice something, and jumped back into his cell, kyber momentarily forgotten.

"No," he snapped, looking down and around himself. He spotted the Sith saber just as a bony hand from the next cell over grasped it in a fist and ghosted it away. "No, no!" He leapt and fell, trying to lay on top of the saber and the arm attached to it, but it was already gone. From the stone floor, the prisoner looked up at his fellow captive from behind the bars between them and watched as they felt the weapon in their grasp.

Laughter broke through the darkness, a sound of madness.

"Masters," the prisoner turned back toward Ben and Aola, who'd turned to see the commotion but who did not understand what had happened. The man's eyes were wide now not in hunger, but in fear. "Run."

"Jedi," a voice said with invigorated glee, twisting and turning the word into a slimy slur. Ben and Aola turned to face it. From within a barred cell, a red lightsaber split the air. It illuminated a twisted face, furious, malnourished, dirty, and twitching in insanity. "Jedi… will die."