The Fall of the Infinite Empire

by dentedpat

Many thousands of years before the events of KOTOR the Rakatan Infinite Empire dominates the galaxy, with no enemies on the horizon. But an uprising on the world of Korriban and the capture of a family on the world of Tatooine will set the stage for the Fall of the Infinite Empire and the rise of the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic

21. Chapter 21: Myra's Discovery

The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 20

The sun was high in the sky above Halvor, and he stood still with his eyes closed and arms outstretched, soaking it in. The design of the facility meant that they only saw the sun directly for a few hours a day when it was highest in the sky, though its light found its way in for far longer. That, combined with the fact that the days on Lehon were slightly shorter than they were back home, had made Halvor feel rather cooped up and constrained when he first arrived. He was used to days under the hot sun of his home world, unlike the southerners who cowered in their caves and found the sunlight in he enclosure a revelation.

Of course back home he would have had to wear robes covering his whole body to avoid burning. It had once not been like that, so the stories said. Before the war the world had been less dry. There had been clouds to block the sun, at least some of the time. Clouds barely formed now. One day perhaps they would never form at all. And the last water would be pulled from under the earth, and his people would die. The people back home anyway. He was going to make a new home for his people. But he would also, along the way, make them a new people. A stronger people. The people back home were going to die, Halvor was sure, because they were weak. Their spirits had been too weak to fight the Rakatans when they first arrived, distracted as they were by the new technology the invaders brought. Then their bodies had been too weak to stand up to the aliens in battle. The tribes of the north had spent generations stealing weapons, stockpiling them, but there was nothing they could do about the fact that a single unarmed Rakatan warrior could tear through a dozen humans, even armed ones. And of course most Rakatan weapons couldn't even be used by anyone without the Force.

But now they had the Force. Zhed-Hai called it a Gift. 'A Gift from who?' Halvor had asked, back in the great city that Zhed-Hai's servants had taken him to on Tatooine. The city in the sea of glass. There was no glass in the northern regions, just the sand that resulted from the glass being crushed. Something about the wind currents Zhed-Hai had said. What did it matter? It would all be sand someday. Sand covering a dead civilization, and burying a people that could not defend themselves. But they would defend themselves in the future. They would do more than that. They would strike back. The Rakatans had taken his world from him. One day his people would take their world from them. Halvor knew he would not live to see that day. The Rakatans were still too strong. Only a few of his people had the Force, and few even of those could stand up to a single Rakatan warrior. Halvor knew he could. Usment could as well, he was sure. Perhaps a handful more. Then there was Myra.

Thinking about Myra made Halvor smile. There were the obvious reasons for the smile. She was a vibrant and energetic woman and the joy they had taken in each other was not something Halvor was going to forget, especially now that she had made it clear it would not happen again. Or at least that's what she says now, Halvor thought. He was intent on changing her mind, and had spent the weeks since her family arrived trying to make it happen. It was not base pleasure seeking he told himself. He was, he was sure, above such things. Myra was the key to the future, to their people's revenge. Before Myra appeared, Halvor's thoughts had all been on the survival of his people. But when he saw her fight, she who had never fought a battle before, he had seen what his people might become. She had toyed with his best warriors. The only one to give her even the least trouble had been Usment, and in response she had left him a bloody, broken mess. Even the thought of losing his closest and oldest friend, the only human who had made the trip to Lehon with him and was still there, had not dampened Halvor's enthusiasm. If she could do that to Usment, what could she do to the Rakatans? What could her children do?

Well not her current children of course, he thought. She had gotten them off of that weakling Tytus. But if a true warrior, strong in the Force, could get her with child, the potential was breathtaking. His people bred animals up north, where the Rakatan patrols were infrequent and never covered much ground anyway, so he knew the principles. He knew it would take time, but with the right plan, strength could be bred with strength and his people would become mighty. They still needed the refuge that had been the object of most of Halvor's plans before Myra's arrival. A place to grow numerous and powerful. But before Myra Halvor had thought that it would only be with massive numerical advantage that his people could hope to defeat the Rakatans. After her, he knew that they had the potential to match them, warrior for warrior. She was the key to it all. From her would arise the people who would return to Lehon one day, and do to it what the Rakatans had done to Tatooine. And her muscles moved so pleasantly under her tunic, and her skin shone so seductively in the sunlight. It was quite a shame that the southerners were stuck in those caves, he thought, with skin like that.

Halvor sensed someone approaching and opened his eyes. To his pleasant surprise he saw Myra walking up the gentle slope towards him. Halvor made his home on a small hillock on the opposite side of the enclosure from Myra and her family. They were far enough away, and the enclosure large enough that Halvor could not really see them when he was on his hill. There was nothing on Halvor's hill for anyone to see at all, except a little fire pit. He had built no house for himself from the materials that had been made available to him, instead donating them to others, an action in which he took pride. Those who received from him were in his debt, while all who knew of his action, which he made sure was everyone, thought better of him for it. The most important benefit, however, had been with his fellow northerners. Back home it was a mark of pride amongst his people to sleep under the open sky, to risk capture by the Rakatans rather than live in hiding. Of course not all did so. The women were kept hidden and protected, but no man who hoped for a position of leadership could permit himself to stay among them. Halvor had been taking trips above ground since he was a boy, and had spent years living almost entirely on the surface, descending into the caves only to get supplies, which were his for the asking. He was a raider, one of those who kept the fight alive. The others existed to keep him and his friends alive, to keep them strong, that their strength might be turned against the enemy.

Of course ninety-nine times out of a hundred the enemy was some droid the Rakatans sent out to patrol, not the Rakatans themselves. It had been years since anyone in his tribe had seen a Rakatan when Halvor had started raiding. All he had to go on then were paintings on cave walls and broken bits of statuary made in the time before the war. When we were slaves, he thought. They had been objects of hate, those pictures and statues, a hate all had been encouraged to express, as openly and as violently as possible. Children would attack the cave walls, or the bits of the statue with their bare hands. Halvor himself had once pummeled the wall until his hands were bloody. He had been eight, not yet halfway through childhood. His blood could still be seen, or so he assumed, on the painting of the Rakatan in that cave. Unless the Rakatans had killed everyone in the cave after capturing Halvor and his band of raiders. Halvor had, years after his assault on the picture of the enemy, finally gotten his chance to kill one of the enemy for real, and he had taken it, had felt the Rakatan's blood stop pumping through the veins in its neck, watched the eyes fly around in terror before finally coming to rest, looking directly up at him. He had spent years hunting other Rakatans, until the day of his crowning triumph, when he, his band and several other groups, including Usment's party, had ambushed a dozen Rakatans in some convoy. The price of victory that day had been terrible, but the price paid after the victory had been worse. The ambush had gotten their attention, and the response had been swift and savage. The survivors of the ambush, had found refuge in the mountains. From their high perch they had seen the ships crisscrossing the desert below them. They must have seen something moving for they had attacked from the sky with their weapons of light and heat. Had they found the cave, with the women, the children, the old men, and the cowards? If they had, what had the Rakatans done? Just destroyed the cave entrance? That was fine. There were always more that could be dug. Or did they go in the caves and exterminate those they found? What had become of Halvor's mother? His younger brothers and sisters? The lovely girls who had always sought his attentions? The children he had gotten on them?

He had never found out. Zhed-Hai claimed to not know the answers, and something about the disinterest in his voice when he had answered the question had made Halvor believe him. Halvor did not understand Zhed-Hai's goals, or his methods, but he knew that the Rakatan was interested only in strength. When Halvor had been eventually captured and brought south, he had been part of a group of hundreds. He had never been able to figure out whether any of his family were in that group, for they had been chained up inside a huge ship. It had taken them to the edge of space before descending again to the empty city. Then the culling had begun. At least half of the prisoners had been removed from the cells before Zhed-Hai had ever called for him. Their first discussion had been short. Zhed-Hai asked questions about Halvor's abilities. Were his reflexes faster than his fellow humans? Could he lift more or hit harder? All the time, or only when he was angry? Could he tell where people were without looking at them? How far away could he sense them? Then Zhed-Hai had used the Force on him, tossing him from place to place around the room. Halvor had tried to push back, at first with his hands, and then, to his surprise, with his mind. It hadn't worked. His body still moved where Zhed-Hai wished it to move. But Halvor felt as though he was moving slower, or with less violence, when he resisted. Clearly Zhed-Hai had felt the same, for when Halvor was brought to Lehon, he had been placed on the upper level, with others strong in the Force. He had found out quickly that he was the strongest of his people and that remained true for a long time. Then Myra came.

And now here she was. Halvor wondered what she was here to talk about. He had been pushing her out of her self-imposed exile from the circle, but he doubted his initial attempts had already managed to change her mind. She was strong, and strength was not easily moved. She had not quite made it all the way to the base of the hill when she stopped walking and looked up at him. She meant for him to walk the last few steps, down to her. He was being summoned. He locked eyes with her, smiled and folded his arms. If she had something to say, she would come to him. Halvor did not live the lonely existence Myra did, off away from most everyone else. There were many people who could see him, and it would not do to let them see him come to her. Myra, clearly understanding the reason for his refusal, shook her head and started to walk up to him. Good, Halvor thought, we start the conversation in the correct fashion.

"What brings you to me Myra?" Halvor asked.

"Tytus," she answered.

"Ah yes, Tytus. We met. He was the kind of man who made me wonder, how many other men were there in those caves with you?"

"That's funny," Myra said, without a hint of amusement in her voice. "I didn't come here for jokes. I came to discuss something important. Can I trust you to do that?"

"You can always trust me Myra. I hope you know that."

"I have spent the past few weeks living in fear that you will kill Tytus, and maybe my children. I can't trust you not to do that. And if I can't trust you not to do that, why should I care that you don't lie? Especially when you know you can't get away with lying."

"So what about Tytus do you want to discuss?" Halvor asked, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

"He is going to fight," Myra said.

Halvor smiled. "Is he now? Well that's good. It will go quite a long way towards solidifying your position here. Yes. Yes, this will be for the best."

Myra shook her head. "I think I would have known what you were thinking even without the Gift…"

"The Force!" Halvor interrupted.

"What?"

"Don't call it the Gift. That is what they call it," Halvor said, pointing at the distant glass walls of the enclosure.

"So what?" Myra responded impatiently.

"So you shouldn't talk the way they talk. Eventually you start thinking the way they think. Start thinking maybe that your people ought to be slaves, like they do."

"Do you really think that calling it one name rather than the other leads right to accepting this?" Myra gestured around her, at the whole facility.

"Your people did that once already."

"My people? I thought we were one people Halvor. I thought that was your whole thing. And if you don't mind me asking, where did you get the name 'the Force' from? Whose thinking are you going to start adopting?"

Halvor, who was breathing heavily from his anger, held back from answering initially, not knowing whether it was a good idea to tell Myra the truth. But thinking that perhaps it would change her mind, he said, "There was a prisoner here, before you arrived. He was kept far below us, on one of the lower levels. He was an alien, but not the enemy. I don't know what he was. But he could…talk to us. In our minds. We could hear him, and he could hear us."

Myra, her curiosity piqued, asked "Who is us?"

"They are gone now. They were here when I arrived. They had been here a long time they said. They told me how to get in touch with him. I am the last one left. The last one who communicated with him."

"What happened to this alien?" Myra asked.

"Eventually he went silent. He warned me that it might happen. He said Zhed-Hai was becoming suspicious, and that we had not be careful enough."

"And this alien calls it the Force?"

"Yes, and he is right to do so. It is not a gift because no one gives it. It belongs to us. It is part of us. The Old Man wants us to think it is a Gift, because he wants us to think he and his kind gave it to us. But he didn't. It is ours. It is like our hands or our minds. Those aren't gifts. They are how we control the world, how we make it what we want it to be."

"More empty word games," Myra said, shaking her head.

"No! It is about changing how you think. So you can free yourself! When they ruled our people it wasn't with chains that they bound us. They got us to accept that it was right for them to be in charge. They brought us trinkets and in return we gave them our world."

"I did not come here for speeches."

"You need them. You have to change your understanding of the situation, of what is important."

Myra stared into Halvor's eyes and said "No I don't. And I am done talking about what name we give to what we can do. You want Tytus to fight because you want him to die, and I know that. But that isn't what is going to happen."

"No one knows how things will turn out in the Circle Myra."

"Yes I do. We both do. If he fights one of your boys, Tytus will die. Tytus doesn't have the Gift or the Force or whatever you want to call it like you or I or even your little followers have it. But if you disallow using it, then Tytus will live."

"That isn't how it works."

"Then make it how it works now," Myra said matter-of-factly.

"What would be the point of him fighting if he isn't really going to fight?"

"The point is you letting this go. And you can't do that until he fights," Myra answered.

"So your solution to the problem is we pretend it is solved? Brilliant Myra," Halvor mocked.

"The only problem is your insistence that this fight happens," Myra responded calmly.

Halvor balled up his hands into fists in front of him, almost shaking with frustration, "I have explained this to you, and I know you understand! The circle is how we keep our people strong. Everyone submits to it, and once through all are brothers and sisters…"

"All? What about the ones below us? Do they fight in the circle?"

Myra's interruption did nothing to help Halvor's mood. This was not going the way he anticipated. "Of course they don't fight in the circle, they are weak. We are the warriors. We are their strength."

"Then think of Tytus that way."

"If you want him thought of that way then have Zhed-Hai send him down below with the others!"

Myra shook her head, "You don't listen to anything you don't want to hear. I don't want him below. I want him with me and my children. Just tell your minions to think of him like the others."

"While he walks around here, where all can see? When every other person on this level is stronger than him? We live in the sun, and that means we have responsibilities…"

"I do not care about how you all did things back home!" Myra interrupted again. "I don't. It has nothing to do with our lives here. And you know that. The reason you want him below is that you want me alone."

Halvor took a few deep breaths in before answer, "No Myra, I don't want you to be alone."

Myra looked at him with something more derisive than pity. "I thought this might be a waste of time."

After saying that Myra got down on her knees. Halvor looked down, uncertain of what was going on.

Myra looked up at him and said, "So I came with a plan."

Halvor moved to grab her hand to pull her up, and realized he could not move. After the first second of shock he started pushing harder. Nothing changed. He was locked in place. He looked down into Myra's eyes, and knew it was her doing.

"You won't listen, so you have to be forced. Problem is, then what? I could kill you Halvor. I don't want to, but I could. It would solve the immediate problem."

Halvor summoned all his willpower, called forth all his ability with the Force to push against Myra. It had an effect. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. He had made her work harder, but she still managed to keep him locked in place.

"If you died, what would your people do? I can't take them all on at once. So I decided I had to scare you, to show you the difference between us. But how to scare you without humiliating you in front of your people? If they saw you made a fool of, would they follow you still? And if they wouldn't, who would they follow? I don't want them following me. Would it be Usment? Maybe not. Maybe he is too loyal."

Halvor's hand began to move, against his will, towards Myra. She gently placed his hand on her head, in something like a sign of blessing. She smiled at him as she made him do this.

"What if I get stuck with someone worse than you? Those little boys who follow you around, I don't want to see what this place is like with one of them in charge. You have your purpose Halvor, your role, and I don't want to take that from you. For our sake but also for yours."

His hand moved back to his side, all the while he struggled against the invisible chains that bound him, and failed. Myra stood up, looking exhausted as she did so.

"I don't want to hurt you Halvor. I just want you to understand. If you keep pushing this I will push back. I wanted to give you this chance to see what would happen if I did."

Halvor took a gulping breath, only realizing as he did it that her locking him in place had kept him so still he hadn't breathed. He could move now. He looked at Myra, and his fear kept his anger in check. Myra looked as though a great deal of tension had been released from her body.

"Now your people have seen me come to you. They have seen me kneel in front of you. They will think that I begged. And they all saw what I did to Usment in the Circle, so seeing me beg you for something, that will make you look all the stronger. It will give you more power over them. And you are going to use that power to tell them that when Tytus fights, they won't use the Gift or the Force or whatever you want to call it. You will do this. You will do it because you know there is only one other way for this to go."

Myra nodded and turned around without waiting for Halvor's reply. He was left standing there, struggling to get his breathing back under control. Would he listen? Did he care most about what his followers thought about him, or would his pride get the better of him? Let it be the former, Myra thought. She really did not want to have to kill him. She didn't want to kill anyone of course, but she couldn't deny that there was more to it than that with Halvor. He had been so charming and empathetic when she first arrived. Or maybe she had just thought so because she was scared and missed her family. Maybe he wasn't charming but just manipulative. It didn't matter now, that was done.

As Myra walked towards her end of the enclosure she noticed as the other people, her fellow guests as Zhed-Hai called them, moved well out of her way, and she felt they were really overdoing it. Yes she had injured Usment, but he was back now, and it had been in their stupid little Circle hadn't it? There was no reason for them to be afraid of her. 'Of course there is', said a little voice in her head, a voice that sounded disturbingly like Zhed-Hai's. It sounded so much like him that she worried for a moment that he was in her mind. She stopped walking and closed her eyes, forcing herself to be calm. She needed to concentrate. She knew what it felt like to have him in her mind. If she was calm and focused she felt sure she could tell if this time was like those. Of course the thought occurred to her that she did not know whether he could enter her mind while masking that he was doing so, but of course if he were doing that he would hardly have announced himself this way. She searched her mind and felt nothing, nothing but herself. And that meant, of course, that she was starting to speak to herself in his voice. With that unsettling thought she continued on.

Of course it wasn't a mystery why it would be his voice her mind would employ to deliver that message. She could practically hear him continue. 'They know you are stronger than they are. They have spent their whole lives being special, the way you have always been special. And then they came here and found others like themselves, some stronger, some weaker. But you are stronger than the strongest. You broke the strongest of them like a toy. They know that your power is different than theirs, and they fear you. And they will come to hate you.'

In the end, everything came back to fear and hatred for Zhed-Hai. All his lessons always ended up in the same place. Life for the powerful was nothing but conflict and death. Strength invites challenge. Challenge leads to death, one way or another. She had yet to detect a purpose to these lessons, but perhaps this annoying voice in her head was it. Was he trying to make her think like him? He wasn't there yet of course, but was this the first step? Thoughts like his intruding, pushing their way into her mind. Over time would they go from surprising event to habit? Would she eventually just give in and start looking at the world the way he did? Would she see everyone and everything as a threat to be dealt with or a tool to be used? That is what they all were to him, even her, despite what he might say. She did not know what he wanted to use her for, but he clearly had some purpose in mind for her.

Myra stopped in her tracks when she saw her children. They were already far from their hut, near to the center of the enclosure. Tytus was nowhere to be seen. Sani was running with Corus' hand in hers, pulling her little sister along. Corus was crying, shrieking really. Sani looked terrified but also intent on getting to her mother. Brun ran behind them, and looked bewildered and uncertain. Myra was running before she realized it. She could see the terror in their faces. They needed her. And every second she wasn't there to help them felt like a knife in her gut.

"They took Daddy!" came Corus' tiny voice.

"The guards! The guards came and…" Brun could not bring himself to finish the sentence but of course he did not need to. Sani simply stared at her mother while she ran, as though Myra would be able to magically fix everything if she could just reach her. But of course as far as the children were concerned Myra could do magic.

Myra closed the gap between herself and her children quickly. Corus broke free from Sani's grasp and Myra scooped her up in a smooth motion. With her free hand she took Sani's hand, and she turned to Brun, who she knew would not want to be pulled, and barked "Come on."

Why was she racing back to the hut when she already knew he was not there? She realized after a moment that she was taking the children back there because it was the closest thing they had to home. She needed to help them past their fear, and that was the best place to do it. And what she needed to do could be done anywhere. She had done it before.

"How long ago, Brun? How long ago did the guards come?" Myra asked as they ran.

Brun shook his head. "They showed up after you left. I don't know how long. Father told us to run when he saw them coming."

"We hid behind the little rock," Sani interjected. "We heard Father asking them where they were taking him. They didn't say anything."

What would have been the point? Neither Tytus nor the children could have understood them, Tytus because of a lack of ability and the children because of a lack of practice. They were coming up on their little hut now. Myra slowed as she entered it, and sat down on Corus' bedroll. She beckoned Sani and Brun to come sit with her. Now that she was seated she no longer needed to hold Corus, who had wrapped her arms around Myra's neck anyway, and she held the hands of each of her older children.

"Did they hurt him?" she asked.

"No!" Brun answered over Sani's "I don't know."

"Alright, it is going to be alright. I promise. We knew this would happen; we just didn't know when." Myra rubbed her cheek on Corus' little head while she looked back and forth between Brun and Sani, making sure to look them in the eyes, to show them that she was not afraid. "I told you father about it. The Rakatan who is in charge wants him for something. But he said that he would bring Daddy back." Myra looked down at Corus' face, more than half hidden in her shoulder, and smiled at her.

"You don't know?" Brun was trying to keep the panic out of his voice, and seemingly could only manage it by sounding angry.

"No, but your father is going to be fine," she said, with more confidence than she felt. Brun stood up and walked around the small room of the hut. Sani sat on her feet, looking down at her knees. Corus moaned and whimpered into Myra's neck. For a few minutes Myra just rocked slightly back and forth with her youngest, repeating every few moments that things were going to be ok. As she did this she reached out with her mind. It spread out like a net that had her at its center. The edge of the net passed over the other humans in the enclosure. Myra did not know all their names, but she knew the feel of each of them. She had done this exercise before, at first at Zhed-Hai's direction, but since then several times just to see how far she could push her awareness out. The net reached the transparent wall that surrounded them and passed through it as though it was not there, because in a way it wasn't. The wall was some dead thing, and to her mind only life appeared. The net passed over the Rakatans who guarded this place. The net spread upward and downward. Beyond the facility she knew she would find the jungle. She had pushed herself a few times to reach out to the city beyond the jungle, but its outer limits were also the limits of how far her net could go. If Tytus had been taken there she would not be able to feel him.

So she cast her net downward. There were only a dozen or so floors above the level in which they lived. But below she knew there were dozens upon dozens. Among them were Tytus' parents, Myra's sister and her mate, but there were hundreds of others. Myra sensed the humans and the Rakatans below her. She knew from Zhed-Hai's instruction that all living beings gave off some sign, all could be sensed, but those with the Gift were easier to sense than others. Some of the humans below them she could barely sense at all. But what Myra was interested in were the Rakatans who she could barely sense. She had noticed only after a few weeks on Lehon that some of Zhed-Hai's guards did not have the Gift. She thought at first she was mistaken, because she had been told more than once that all Rakatans had the Gift. And most of the guards at Zhed-Hai's facility on Lehon did have the Gift, and strongly, at least compared to her people. But she had figured out that the only Gifted guard that ever escorted her, or interacted with her at all, was the one-eyed guard from Tatooine. If Tytus had been taken, Myra reasoned that it was likely he was likely taken either by that one-eyed guard or by the guards without the Gift, the silent ones who never spoke to Myra, for they would not have understood her response.

So Myra cast her mind downward, looking for Tytus and looking for the silent ones, the drones. That was a term she had seen in the one-eyed guard's mind, when one of them had joined him to escort her to Zhed-Hai. What she feared was finding no sign of Tytus, but finding the drones at their regular guard stations, at the bottom levels of the facility. It would mean that they had not taken Tytus out of the facility and into the city. It would mean that Zhed-Hai had lied and killed Tytus when she was not there to defend him. It would mean she would have to follow through with her threat, or accept her powerlessness, and neither option appealed to her. So she pushed her awareness down, over the level upon level of Rakatan guards and human captives. There were, she knew several subterranean enclosures like the one in which her family resided. They were like that garden she had seen in the building back on Tatooine. Green things kept growing inside by use of technology. The people there lived with no sun and no stars, though for most of them that was no change from their life back home. She pushed deeper and deeper, concentrating so much that she could barely hear Corus cry, or perhaps the rocking had had its desired effect, and her baby had just calmed down.

She reached the bottom levels, and she could not feel the drones, though she worried that she was missing them simply because she was reaching so far from herself, and the drones were so faint to begin with. If each life in the facility was like a light, the drones were more like the afterimage of light, the spot that lingered after you looked at where light once had been.

So she pushed farther and harder than she ever had before. To her children it looked and sounded as though she was in pain and struggling under some heavy load, but to Myra it felt as though her mind was sharpening. As though everything that had been hazy and indistinct was coming into focus. If she had ever seen fog, she would have compared the experience to seeing it melt away in the morning sun. Only she was the sun. It was her light that banished the haze and brought what had before been only distantly sensed into stark relief. Where before she could not sense the facility itself, only the Rakatans and humans who moved through it, it seemed to her she could see it, or at least she could sense where it was. It took her a moment to realize what was going on. It was not the lifeless walls and machines she sensed, it was what surrounded them, what they kept out. All around these subterranean halls was the rich earth of Lehon, teeming with tiny organisms, some of them too small to see, at least with one's eyes. But to Myra, who felt she was seeing clearly for the first time, they came together to form a kind of glow. Wherever the glow wasn't, there was the facility. And she realized now it extended far deeper than she had thought. There was a single passage twisting its way down deep and her mind followed it down.

A long way down (how long she could not tell, distance was hard to gauge), she felt something else alive. It was not the worms and insects and bacteria that suffused the soil, but a single being. A powerful being. A being of rage and fear and hate. It paced around its cell (how Myra knew it was a cell she could not say, but it occurred to her immediately that it was). It was, she realized, the presence she had felt before, only now it was not some barely perceptible presence, it was as though she were in its cell with it. It was pushing out with its own mind, but not as Myra was. Myra's mind was pushing out to sense what was there, this being was pushing out to find something it could control. Myra was as a net laying itself across everything it found, but this being was like a grasping hand, and it could not reach as far as Myra could. This made Myra wonder whether she could control any of the objects she could sense. She had long since figured out that when her mind made contact with another living being that she could sense the environment surrounding it, as though she were seeing partly through their eyes. She reached out to gently probe at the mind of this raging creature. Her curiosity about both what she had found and what she could do had pushed much of the urgency of finding Tytus out of her mind. In truth if she had stopped to ask herself whether she expected to find him in these areas her mind now travelled, the answer would have been 'no.' But she was wrapped up in the thrill of discovery.

She felt her mental net fall gently on the being far beneath her, and as she did what was revealed was a room with a bed, a chair, and a single door. And nothing else. No one else. Why didn't it leave? Why did it just pace back and forth? Her attention went to the door. Why, she asked herself, was she so sure it could leave? This thing was another of Zhed-Hai's prisoners. Her prison was larger and less lonely than the one it was forced to live in, but they were both prisoners. As she felt her sympathy for the creature growing she realized that something about the feel of its mind had changed. When first her mind had touched its mind there had been nothing but the heat of its anger. Now the thing's mind felt cold. Its thoughts had been moving this way and that, too frenetic for Myra to understand them. Now she was similarly left without insight into what it was thinking but not because of the feverish rapidity, for in the creature's mind all was still.

Myra tried to picture the room the creature was in. It had stopped pacing. It was standing still, unnaturally still, with one foot before the other, as though it had stopped mid stride. Myra focused more and could tell that its eyes were closed. For a few seconds it stayed that way, as though locked in place. Then its head started to slowly roll back, and its eyes opened. It was looking up at the ceiling above it. More like it was looking through the ceiling. Through the rock and many levels of the facility above the ceiling. Looking for what? Looking at what? Then Myra realized that it was looking at her.

Myra pulled back, only to feel the creature's mind leap out and grasp her own, pulling her into darkness. Her vision of the room, the facility around it, everything, vanished. All of it, every sound, smell and feeling of the hut where her body sat, was gone. It was as though she was back in that dark place, the place her mind had gone when she touched the Star Map, but now the thing in the dark with her was not far away, it was all around her, enveloping her. It felt like a many armed thing reaching around her, squeezing her, trying to touch every bit of her mind. Trying to control her. That is what it was trying to do. It was trying to take over her mind. To touch every part of her mind with its mind, and then to push her own will out. She could feel it beginning. She could feel the rage in the creature again, but now she could feel it in herself as well. It was like her mind was mirroring its mind. It was faint now, but growing. And when it her mind mirrored its entirely, she knew, though she did not know how she knew, that she would belong to this creature. Her body would do as it wished. Her power would be at its disposal.

Her power. What would it do with that power? Her children were there with her. She remembered. She was sitting there, her eyes closed and silent. They had no idea what was going on. When her eyes open would it be this creature looking out of them? Looking at her children? What would it do? What would it use her power to do?

Her power. It was hers. Her children were hers. No one was going to take them away. No one was going to use her or her power. She was in the dark, but she was used to the dark. She had felt her way through caves with no light all her life. She could always feel where the stone was, and where it wasn't. Her feet had always found the steps that led her to safety, that led her home. To her children. This darkness was no different. She would find her way out of it. The rage, the rage that belonged to this creature, was suddenly quiet. She did not answer it with rage of her own. That path felt like a slide into a deeper darkness, one with no path out. Anger and hate she had to push away. They were the creature's way in. And fear. Fear most of all. Fear was the path from its mind into hers. Fear would doom her children. Their last moments would be seeing their mother attack them.

No, she said to herself. That would not happen. They would not see that. They would never see that. Where the fear had been Myra felt now only determination. She would not allow this. The tendrils of this thing's mind touched her mind at what seemed like a million points. At every point she pushed. Not to hurt it, not to run away from it, but to refuse it. She could feel its strength, born of hatred, born of fear. Fear of her. She had found it; it had not found her. It struck out at her because it did not know what had found it. It felt her strength. It hungered for it, desired to consume it. But more than anything it desired not to face her power. Because she was strong, stronger than it was. For a moment it hesitated. It felt her pushing back, and the moment of uncertainty that awareness triggered was what Myra needed. This thing came at her in the darkness, and so in the absence of any other she would have to be the light. Her determination, her will, flared forth, and pushed the thing away, shaking its presence out of her mind as though it was water she shook from her hair. And now she saw it again, no longer standing, staring ominously up, but against the wall of its cell, where her response had tossed it. Its rage was breaking, and only its fear remained. As she pulled back from it, she could hear one thought.

"What are you?"

Myra did not stay to answer. She raced away. She never wanted to feel that thing's presence in her mind again. She thought she was racing back up, back to her body, but she realized after a moment that she was going deeper. She looked down and saw what seemed like two lights. They twinkled, like the stars of Tatooine, the stars she had gazed at after their capture, calm and cool and bright. Her mind was moving towards them. As she reached them she felt their presence. Their minds touched hers not like tendrils or limbs, but like a breeze, pushing gently down. They wanted her to go deeper. She tried to reach out with her mind to find what was below her. How deep was she now? How deep did Zhed-Hai's realm go? It seemed to her as though she was in the caves again, the deep silent caves in which she had only trespassed in the most desperate need of water. The caves where no other living thing went. There was always water there, in wells that were almost always too deep to reach. And it seemed to her now as though she was looking down one of those wells. But unlike the caves in which she had grown up this one was not dark. It was as though there was a light at the bottom of it. The water was between her and the light, and she felt as if she could go no farther. But she could hear, though not with her ears, a whisper from the depths below, coming from the faint light beneath the water.

The whisper's said, in a voice deep, and soothing and strong, "Hello, Myra."