Interlude: Pursuers.

The small shuttle dropped onto the pad, and the Czerka supervisor stood, waving. He ran to the hatch, then froze.

A droid stepped down. It carried a blaster rifle, and was definitely not here as a tourist.

"Angry Query: The Female Marai Devos was located here twenty-five minutes ago. Where is she now?"

"Uh, she must have been one of the people that stole our shuttle."

"Exasperated reply: "Then we will pursue them."

"Suggestion:" The man turned as another droid came to the door. "Units 41, 90, and 85 are in the area they are heading for at this moment."

"Agreement: Notify the units."

It turned back, and walked back aboard the ship.

"Hey wait!" The droid turned.

"Query: are you addressing this unit?"

"Are you just going to leave us here?"

The droid dealt with the problem. It left the men there, but they were in no condition to complain.

If units 41, 90, and 85 had been living beings, they probably would have complained about the blizzard they flew into. They might have complained when their ship iced up and crashed. But they were HK 50 series droids. Except for acknowledging that their efficiency had been reduced 4% by the temperature, they merely deployed to wait. There was a noise, and unit 85 detected the magnetic field of an approaching lift and drive engine. It deployed the infantry anti-air missile it carried, tracked then fired.

The shuttle staggered in mid air and came down sliding along the ice shelf, shedding parts like a toy. It came to rest less than a hundred meters from them.

"Irritated Query: Did you think of the 400 kilometer walk we now have because you destroyed the only operational vessel?" Unit 41 asked. Frustrated Addition: We also now have no way to contact the other units that might have assisted."

"Embarrassed reply: No. I merely assumed I would do less damage than that."

Ice field

Marai

I shook my head, standing. There was no sound of movement. I staggered forward. Bao-Dur had been wrapped around the console. Atton had hit his head, but except for a bad cut seemed all right, albeit unconscious. Kreia had been thrown into the seat before her, and knocked out.

"You know, Atton, I would love the idea of actually landing instead of crashing on this planet." I snarled. The blizzard cleared for a moment, and I was running for the access hatch before my mind had told me why. Three HK50s, coming toward us. I opened the hatch, leaping down to face them

"Irritated declaration: There you are. It has been extremely difficult to track you down, Jedi."

Another added. "Relieved statement: But now that you have been found, we can proceed to facilitating communications."

"Unnecessary Addendum:" The third said. "And put an end to our hostilities."

"You could have just made an appointment, you know." I snapped back.

"Surprised exclamation: Was that humor? My programming is not designed to discern it." The third one said.

"Unnecessary Irritated Clarification:" The second one added. "It was not our intent to damage your vessel so severely. It will require either a long term of sub zero conditions while we await another transport, or several days of moving through these inhospitable conditions."

"Eager threat: However we were curious why you came to this remote location. Perhaps when we have a chance to equip you with torture devices you can tell us to pass that time?"

I drew, throwing an ion grenade to land at the feet of the one farthest from me. Then I charged. I reached out with the Force, and one of the droids was spun around. It had already triggered its blaster, and the stun beam hit the one beside it, causing some shorting. I cut, sheering into its head, then dived as another stunner beam, went over my head. I rolled, coming up at full extension, my blade punching into the second one at the power junction box. It shorted out for real this time. I pulled a frag grenade, turned and threw it at the last droid.

That was when the stun beam hammered me into darkness.

Interlude: Rescue

Like ghosts, figures in arctic gear came out of the icy fog and walked up to the scene of the battle. Their eyes moved dispassionately over the scattered remains of three droids. A groan from a snow bank brought one of them over to a form half buried in the whipping snow. Hands turned the figure over, and the woman's eyes opened. For a moment she stared up into the face, then in perfect Echani she said, "We are in your hands." Then she was unconscious.

The figures stood, looking down at her. Then one of them motioned. They picked her up, carrying her to the ship. They checked the others then as one ran a portable heater to the internal electricity to keep them from freezing, they were carried away one by one.

Fifteen minutes later, the now empty shuttle began to freeze.

Telos Academy

Marai

A snap of memory: The grenade flew from my hand at the HK. It was turning, weapon coming up, still a bit jangled from the ion blast. But it was tracking. The grenade landed at its feet, and as the stun blast hit me, I saw it explode, parts of droid falling like metal snow.

Then a face surrounded and occluded by cloth and furs. I could see the eyes, a blue so cold it was almost white, eyebrows that looked like they had been etched on in white paint. As I fell back into the abyss, I was astonished to discover that in the Force there was nothing there. If I went by what the Force told me I was alone, looking up into the face of what, a Goddess that claimed the terminally stupid?

"We are in your hands." I whispered. Why I said it in Echani instead of Basic I have no idea.

I was warm. For a moment I was terrified. We had crashed in a blizzard, the shuttle had been badly damaged enough that none of the systems had been operating. Feeling warm in that frigid clime is not a sign that you are safe. It is a sign you are dying.

I snapped upright. The first thing I noticed was the blinding pain in my head. Stun beams hurt. Your entire nervous system was just shorted like a cheap droid, and it complains.

A lot.

Then I noticed that while my front was still warm, my back was icy cold. I mewled in pain, eyes opening in slits. White furs covered me. When I had sat up some instinct had held my covering to me, hence the warm front. But my back was exposed to the air, and it was bloody cold still. I lay back, and after a few moments I was toasty warm again. Above me was ceramacrete. The walls that I could see by turning my head slowly were also ceramacrete. There was a door, and it opened, a young woman walking in. Her clothes were tight fitting covering every bare inch except for her face, with a hood that concealed her hair. She held a glass of water in her hand a pill of some kind in the other.

"For the headache." Her voice was soft. If they had wanted me dead, they could have just left me in the cold. I took the pill, washing it down.

"Thank you for saving us."

"After the offer of surrender given as it should, what else could we do?" She asked.

We are in your hands. The ritual phrase used by a soldier surrendering, or someone who is rescued from death among the Echani. You surrender all options to your captor/rescuer's whim. I heard the slight inflection. She was Echani.

"I thank you for your gentle pains." I told her in Echani. Her eyes didn't widen, she didn't smile; she didn't frown. I might as well have been talking to a mannequin.

"Our master has stated that she will see you when you are well enough."

"I am well. What of my companions?"

"They are safe."

"Where are they?" She merely looked at me. "Even a prisoner has that much right. Am I prisoner or guest?"

"That is...undecided." She considered. "The man with the prosthetic arm is in our medical bay in a Kolto tank. He struck rather hard. The others are in the main irrigation room to the north side of the compound. The particle emitters that used to be part of the irrigation system make excellent force cages."

I could feel her eyes on me. She wanted me to react, expected me to react. "So my friends are imprisoned?"

"They were held in cages for their own safety, Exile. Until Master Atris could determine your intent. She felt you might have them sacrifice themselves

in a diversion." She said softly.

"I saw no need for a diversion, nor do I see one now."

"Your companions would not have lasted long if you had. The Zabrak is know to us, and would have been easily defeated. The woman is just an old woman. The other one, however... He showed some skill at Echani martial arts."

That surprised me. Atton was a young man with the slouching style of standing and walking a lot of the young do. "Atton knows Te-rehal-Vor?" I asked.

"Oh he masks it well. But when we did not give him an answer, he dropped into the fifth stance."

I considered. The fifth stance was best with multiple opponents. Turning the enemy strikes into smooth counters or blocks before picking whom you would hurt first. "What answer did you refuse him?"

"Your whereabouts. We told him our Master wished to speak with you first, and he did not take it well."

"But where would he have learned Te-rehal-Vor?"

"It has not been a closed art, Exile." She replied tartly. "The Republic teaches it to their special operations teams. It is well known in what is called Special Forces as well."

"I will have to ask him when I have the chance. Where are my clothes?"

"Your clothing are in the storage canister beside you bed, along with your weapons." Again that pregnant pause.

I stood, opening it. I picked up the vibroblade, the grenades, the gun I had hung on my hip in case I felt I needed it. Behind me I could feel her tensing. I set them on the bed, and drew out the robes then returned the weapons to the box.

"May I ask a question?" She asked.

"Go ahead."

"Why do you wear a Matukai robe yet carry Jedi robes? Have you foresworn the honor of the Jedi?"

I slipped the robes on, looking at myself. I had not considered why I had chosen them from the shop. The primary difference between a Matukai warrior's robes and a Jedi's was color and cut. "I do not feel worthy of the honor of a Jedi's garb." I said.

She led me through the building. It had not been built for comfort or long term human occupation. It was a working space with every piece of equipment still ready to operate. Only a touch of a hand would be needed to start it all again.

Another woman stood there. She like the one beside me had white hair and wore the same clothes. In fact they were twins. A moment later I upped that number. Two others stood before a door, and were almost twins to those that followed behind me.

But no. They weren't twins of flesh. I could see minute differences in them. One perhaps a centimeter taller than her fellows, one about the same shorter. Sisters then. But each had the white hair and ice gray eyes of the Rekavali clan of Echana; the largest clan.

The door opened, and I looked into a council room. I walked in, and as the door closed, I noticed that none of them had followed.

Kreia

I have spent decades pretending to be nothing more than a mouse scurrying across the floor. Noticed, but not considered a threat. Yet the feel of minds closed so tightly to the Force as these women was alarming. To teach such mental discipline would free them from the fear of a mental attack, something the Sith had developed to a high art. Even the friendly persuasion, which could draw the Force to it, was something they would never feel.

But there are trade offs in everything. To close your mind down so harshly as a first step would either stop or stultify even the most Force sensitive.

"Is there a reason that hanging around you two seems to get me put in jail? Again?"

"Silence." I tried to hear her thoughts. It was like a drug after so long. But instead all I could hear was the scurrying haste of the thoughts in the cage beside me. He shut up as a pair of the women that inhabited the place came in guiding a hover stretcher. They lay Bao-Dur in the cage beside us, and turned it on before leaving us alone again.

"Hey Metal arm!" Atton shouted. I'd had quite enough of him. I reached out, and he staggered against the cage, bouncing to fall to his knees. "What are you…Stop!"

A living mind is like an onion. On the surface were random thoughts, self loathing, lust after Marai, and surprisingly, some such feeling toward me as well. But that was but the first skin. I peeled it open, and below another, just as chaotic, just as self absorbed. Another, then another. It took time, more than I would like to consider, but suddenly I could feel...

"Please." He was piteous. "Don't tell her..."

"Why ever not?" I asked gently. "If she is Jedi, she will forgive. If she is not, it won't matter. Will it, murderer?"

"Please..."

"Don't worry. I will keep your dirty little secret. But there is a price for my forbearance. You will serve the one who travels with us to the best of your ability. As long as you do, I shall stay my voice."

"But..."

"No, there will be no discussion or duplicity. If you fail me in this, you do not know the punishment I can inflict upon you. You do not wish to know. If it were just your death I wished I would merely shout it out when one of Atris' handmaidens were nearby. She would see you die by centimeters for your crimes."

"How did such a manipulative bitch get so close to her?" He was still fighting me. I pressed, and he fell on his face mewling in pain.

"Like any good Dejarik player, I choose my gambits and my pieces well."

"But she isn't a Queen on your board, you bitch." He struggled back to his knees. "And I am no pawn!"

"No. You are merely the pilot. And as long as you do what needs to be done, I will stay my hand." I released him, and he staggered to his feet.

"Handmaidens? What is this place?"

"It has the feel of a Jedi Academy. Yet there is only a single Jedi in residence. There are others, but they are...Oh Atris...Such a ploy worthy of the Sith themselves."

"What are you..." I reached out that part of myself still in his mind, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. I had found the mind I sought, and was within it as the doors closed.

"Silence." I whispered to him unnecessarily. "There are things happening that will shape the future."

Marai

I walked up the steps, looking at it. A council room as I had thought, right down to the stele in it's center. But I had never heard of an Academy on Telos.

I walked over, hands clasped behind my back, and look at the Stele. The four pillars of the order were etched there, as was done in all such rooms. Truth, Honor, Loyalty, Justice -

I reached out. A hole had been punched in the stele in the face of justice. It looked like a lightsaber had been plunged into the rock. I touched it. No. It was not a wound caused by a lightsaber. It had been crafted so-

-I stood before the High Council of Coruscant. They had not listened, because to listen would have been to admit that perhaps, just perhaps, they had been wrong four years before. Wrong in their demotion of an entire generation of Jedi, wrong in their condemnation of those that had led them to it, that their intransigence might have caused all of those deaths I remembered so well.

They had refused to listen, and because that was their way of dealing with it, I refused to answer. My best friend in the world led that charge of denial and retribution. If they were right, then I was wholly wrong. They had demanded my lightsaber and in my last act of defiance I plunged it into the stone, dividing the word justice into the words Truth and Seek.

"When you have healed the stone, and healed your hearts, then I will speak." I rasped out then I stood there as they reached in and removed all of my connections to the Force as if it were a garden in need of weeding.

I left that day-

"I did not expect so see you again after you left us."

I turned to face the speaker. Atris was more beautiful than I remembered. Ten years had brought out the cheekbones and made the angry flashing eyes almost glow. "Atris."

"I thought you had taken the exiles path wandering the galaxy alone and bereft. Yet you are here now."

She so wanted me to be angry. Any anger I had from then was cold ashes, and I would not rekindle them. "I would like to know why my companions have been locked up like criminals."

"You're companions." I had tripped her up. She had come with a complete prepared speech and scenario. I was not saying my lines and like any actor, she was thrown off. "They were detained for their safety as you were informed already. I find it unusual that you would travel in close company with anyone. Two and a half years as Chief of Security for a company on a ship. Being alone even as a figurehead fits you so much better." She had found her place in the script again. "Why are you here?"

"Some unscrupulous person stole my ship."

She smiled. Now I was back on the right page. "Your ship. The Ebon Hawk belongs to the monsters that butchered an entire planet and put Telos and twenty others worlds in mortal danger. Are you admitting that?"

"I did not destroy Peragus."

"Spare me! What was it, an accident? Did you throw a lit death stick into the minefield of asteroids?" She barked a laugh. "You have not changed. Still acting before thinking, putting your own vision of what must be before the Galaxy, before your friends, before the Jedi themselves!"

I looked at her. "Atris, we were friends for almost ten years. You know I would not have done this-"

"I did not know you from the time you marched off with Revan. When you spat on everything the Jedi believe in to feed you own lust for combat. Do you know what you have done? Twenty worlds rested on the reclamation of Telos and Peragus is the linchpin of them all! You have condemned not a few billions but almost a trillion people to being outcasts from their own destroyed worlds!"

"I did this? Why don't you explain what I have done." I said flatly. All right, she was an old friend and except for your own family no one knows better what to say to get you angry.

"When the Civil War ended, no one wanted to judge the cost of repairing what had been smashed. Twenty worlds have been devastated, stripped or poisoned by that war. The Jedi and our supporters have tried to convince the Senate that we must heal this damage. Must give those people a place to live again. Among them are worlds destroyed by you-"

"No worlds were destroyed by forces I was in command of." I snapped.

"But Revan and Malak did devastate worlds. When they came against us they destroyed more. Our supporters have pointed out that twelve of them are in the outer Rim, beyond Mand'alor and outside of the Republic. That offering and helping to rebuild those worlds would bring other worlds into the Republic. The Cathar especially look on. Their world has lain devastated since the first days of Mandalorian Wars now over twenty-five years ago.

"We were able to get the Republic to fund just one planet as an experiment to see if it could be done. But Telos is that one planet, and you in your blind stupidity have destroyed their primary fuel source! Without the fuel to keep the reactors and thrusters operational Citadel Station will fall, and no one will agree to spend the gross revenues of a full year on 19 other failures! If ruin you must spread, could you have not merely done it to yourself and not more innocents?"

"You have my ship. Did you bother to check the sensor logs?" I snapped. My anger was a ball of heat I would not release.

"Why bother? We know that the TSF is investigating your actions-"

"Was, Atris. Was. We did not fire our weapons, and avoided everything larger than a human head in our escape from Peragus. If you must blame someone, blame the Sith!"

The shout threw her off stride. "The Sith? What have the Sith to do with this?"

"The Sith captured the Frigate Harbinger, came to Peragus station, and fired on my ship when we tried to escape. It was they, not I that are to blame."

She shook her head. "You speak truth. I can feel the injuries you sustained, taste the Sith upon them. But why would they go to Peragus of all places? It is not like there is anything there of real value to them!"

"I was there. I was aboard Harbinger when they took that vessel. Only pure luck and a Droid trying to collect the bounty saved me then."

"You." Now her voice was flat. "If they had wanted a target they would have been after me, as many a bounty hunter would be with that bounty you speak of. But the Sith are blind to everything but their own wants, and that has always been their weakness." She considered. "Perhaps they only allowed you to run because you would run to me. Give them something they wanted."

"If I had known you were on Telos, I would have made a blind jump instead. There is at least one Sith Lord remaining. I have seen him, and he is like nothing I have ever heard of those monsters."

"No matter. Even the greatest of the Sith would have no chance against a Jedi Master in her full glory."

She was blind. I could have given her half a hundred names of Jedi Masters that had fallen facing the Sith. Just because she was so sanctimonious and pure would not save her. She needed help.

"Let us discuss what must be done. There are others who must still be alive. Let me help you find them."

"You turned your back on the order, on the Council. On me. Why should I believe you would wish to help us now? The Jedi are not an article of clothing you leave in your closet because they are out of style only to be dusted off when style brings them back around. The commitment is stronger than you can possibly imagine! Or perhaps you are now afraid and wish us to protect you?"

"I know how deep that commitment is, Atris. I felt it for the order from my first memories. I felt it for the Republic I served and protected. I felt it for a friendless girl I offered it to, and thought it had been returned." I felt that pain again. "As much as I wish the last ten years had never happened, you need help, and I am offering it."

She looked at me. I could feel the echo of that pain. Like a new convert to a religion, she had embraced the entire message of what the Council had thought when she was elevated to the Council. She had lashed out at Revan and the others through me because I was standing before them. It was I, the one true friend she had in the Galaxy she had cast aside and stripped of the Force. She may have regretted it, but it had not stopped her from wielding the blade.

"Perhaps you can help, but not here. With the Sith returned, the reason for the Council's dissolution is no more. There are those that can help us in this struggle, and I would ask you to seek them out.

"Take your ship. Seek them out, and ask them to return. Not to Telos, but to Dantooine. Once that is done we can call the Council back to session, and find a way to fix what has been done."

"I will do this."

I didn't hear a word of command, but three of the young women came from behind me. "We shall remove her now, Master." The girl turned. She was the only one that looked different among them. Sharper, more predatory. She motioned, the same fluid motion they all had. "Please."

I walked out.

Handmaiden

The exile was not what I expected. You always hear someone say 'I thought you were taller' to someone they had only heard about. I knew she was shorter than I, almost twice my age, and had once been a Jedi as our Master was.

I had not expected the soul deep weariness that weighed on her. The pain in her eyes that spoke of suffering. The strength of will to stand before Atris as an opponent, and not go for a weapon or scream at her. Strength she should not have had.

I saw Master Atris' face. She had such a look of pain and longing on her face that I wanted to hold her until it passed. She looked at me. "Yes?"

"Mistress, the Exile. You have spoken of her often. I have never seen anyone have this effect on you. Was she important to you once?"

"The young all have their heroes, my child. When you see them fall, see them fail, a part of you dies inside. We had a choice to make fifteen years ago. She chose one way, I went another. The day she stood before us in judgment I stood and faced her. She was... was so right. She would not tell us why she was right, or explain to any of us. I could feel that moral certitude flowing from her like the Force, and I questioned my own motives. Questioned even the Council's wisdom.

"But I have had ten years of trying to clean up the mess she and the others caused. Ten years of looking on devastation she caused, or aided in the cause. I will not throw away a decade of my work and assume that she might be right now." She looked at me, and her face softened in a smile. "I am tired, my pet. I must rest and meditate."

"I will inform the others that you must be left alone for a time, Mistress."

Marai

I stood there in the main chamber of the pumping station remembering. I had been 16 when Atris and I first met. She had worked into the advanced Te-rehal-Vor class. She had done it by working harder than anyone else, something no one else granted her.

Have you met someone that is a natural victim in one way or another? Atris was eighteen years old, studying to be a Consular, unwilling to admit that anyone was better than she at anything. The advanced class was almost all Guardians by that time. She had as far as anyone had ever ascertained, no sense of humor. She always had the bewildered look of someone that never got the joke, which made her a natural target for those who enjoyed her confusion. The only class where she was not made fun of was Te-rehal-Vor.

They had begun winnowing us into our specialties when I was 11 and only my master's insistence that I could be a Consular had held me back from joining them for two full years. I had hit the ground running in training, and the only thing another Guardian would never be my better at was Te-rehal-Vor. I had worn a Teacher's sash in it when I was 13, and was the acknowledged Padawan teacher of the class. There was our master who still assured that I did not push the newer students too hard. But all he really had to do was watch me.

When she entered the class, there were those that wanted to tease her. To ask her if she had practiced Mak-Chi-Tai, which they claimed meant proper breathing but was merely the noise a woman made in the throes of passion in Gutter Corellian. I caught them at it the first week, and having a dozen men half again my height kneeling, grunting like a woman in the throes of orgasm stopped that.

She flourished because I spent more time with her. A class lasted two standard hours, but I would always spend time making sure she did an extra hour. Not as punishment, but merely to get her up to the standards of the rest of the class.

I didn't know how much I had grown fond of her until the Grandmaster of the Corellian Academy visited us one day. I watched him walking the house, going through the class like a reaper mowing the grain. By the time he came to the Teacher's line he had sent three of my students to hospital by not restraining himself. Atris held an arm we later discovered was dislocated.

Three of the five of our student teachers joined them in hospital. I was so coldly furious that I almost did not give him a proper bow. We fought, and at one point he turned and used a Shuto-Shir kick. I felt his foot hit my chest, and blacked out.

I heard nothing, just the blood pumping in my ears, the sound of shouting in the distance. Then a soft voice.

"Marai. It is all right, Marai. The enemy is no more. Please Marai, the battle is won, and you can rest."

The voice was soft, insistent. The sound of a person speaking to a raging beast, trying to calm it down. Suddenly I knew it, knew whose voice it was. "Atris?"

"Yes, Marai. It is I."

"Atris?" Part of me did not want to believe it. My muscles were spasming to strike at someone, but I could not see who or why.

"The battle is done. The enemy is no more. You hurt your friends now. Rest."

I awoke in hospital the next morning. I had gone into what is called Kashin-Dra. The shadow warrior. It is rare among those who practice our art. The mind must be so tightly focused on nothing but winning that even being knocked unconscious will not stop them. Only death was a sure way to stay them. They are the stark warriors of Echani legend and one had stalked our training hall that day.

But the legend also said that only one thing beyond the death of everything around them would cool that fury. That was the voice of their beloved. It was a standard part of Echani bedtime stories of the monster that terrorizes the village until the brave girl discovers that it is a shadow warrior, and her love returns him to humanity.

It wasn't until that evening that I knew all of what had happened. The visiting master had struck me and I fell, but I had rolled back to my feet. He had assumed I was not injured, even though a Shuto-Shir kick like that would have and did break several ribs. He had come in again, and they say I flowed like water around his attacks. Every move they said was liquid death, for I pressed ever to the attack. He had extended himself, deriding our master for failing to stop me. I had taken serious blows, and still kept coming. I had three broken ribs, two broken fingers, a shattered collarbone and my left arm had been dislocated, but still I fought in an eerie silence.

Finally he understood the danger. He had cried enough, but I was not to be stopped. The injury he had done to me was nothing to what I did to him before they tried to peel me off of him. He would spend the next week in a bed not far away.

Peeling me off however merely gave me more targets. Five of my fellow students and my own master had been thrown around like chaff. I had turned to attack the crowd that was frozen in fear when Atris had leaped up.

Speaking as if gentling a frightened riding animal, she had somehow caught my attention in my mindless darkness. She had stopped, me made me stand still then when she had said rest I had fallen.

Of course she had known what to do. She was Echani. Kashin-Dra were the stuff of legend and bedtime stories on her world. When I returned to class, no one even thought of teasing her. They weren't sure if we were lovers or not.

We stayed firmly away from the subject. She was astonished that my mind had used her as a way to return me to normal, and I was terrified that they would assume that I was using my position as teacher in such a manner.

The Grand master from Corellia was retired. He had always pushed his students too hard, and this was the final straw. I had a friend that I knew could stop me in the worst possible mood.

Or so I thought.

Interlude: Dreams within the Nightmare

Visas

I extended my thoughts, feeling along the patterns of the Force like a web weaver waiting for a meal.

Most humans would say they saw the threads, but my people would not have been among them. 15 millennia of living on a world where everything is dark would do that. After all that time, our people had lost the use of our eyes. We still had them, but we never used them.

We were peaceful in the darkness of our home. There was danger, but it was slight. We raised our web weavers, using their bodies for our food, their threads for our clothing.

Then there were the wonder stones. Crystals off worlders called them. They would warm at the touch, some would warm enough that we could use them to cook our food. Others would warm until they were like another body beneath the covers at night. It was the stones that had made us branch out from our caves into the darkness beyond. Most of those that had wandered before had died because they could not find a warm body to curl up beside when they slept.

Humans had come. According to them we were human as well, or near humans, but we considered them dreams, and sometimes nightmares. Dreams when they came peacefully to trade food and warm clothing for our stones. Nightmares when they felt they had the right to take if we would not trade.

Then the dreams had all been nightmares. I was seven when it came. The ones others called the Sith. Nightmares of human flesh that took and took, and never gave anything back.

We were helpless against them. In all our history we had not had words for war, for genocide, or slaughter. In our time the worst we had ever had before would have been described as a Cantina brawl with the casualties you might expect from one.

The Sith taught us what the words meant. We tried, as we always had to flee. To go deeper into our caves, to hide until they went away. But they did not go away. We would have surrendered if we had known what that word meant, but all surrender would do is assure that the Sith had a freer reign then they had before.

They brutalized our women, slaking their lusts until the bodies would grow cold, for when you hurt most of us, we merely faded into our own minds, and died. They tried to force our men to work, but the bite of the lash, the sting of the stun rod would do the same to our men.

Of the millions there once were, there was only me now. I had been told that more than once by my master.

He said there was only one reason I still lived. Because when he brutalized me I did not merely fade and die. I fought back, weakly, inefficiently, but I resisted. It amused him. He had tried to find ways to make me fade. He had placed blades in my hands, directed my touch, my feeling for other people for I would have been a healer if I had grown to maturity in normal times.

Instead I turned that art at his direction. I have lost count of those tied to tables, bound in chains that I have patiently taken down to their basic elements while they still lived and screamed. I remember going to bed for weeks on end with the blood of those I had injured on my hands, my body. I had to stop caring or go mad. I am still not sure which happened first.

When I turned from child to women, suddenly I was of less interest to him. No longer was I to be tormented, now I would torment others at his command.

When that bored him, he then took a blade, and taught me to fight. He did it in the easiest manner imaginable. He could use what he called the Force to give me unbearable agony. If I did not fight, he would punish me, make me writhe on the ground with agony beyond exquisite.

I learned the blade, the staff then the lightsaber. I learned to use the Force as he did, though I refused to merely harm someone because he wished it. As I would fall down in pain, I would hold that one bit of resistance to my heart. That I would not use the Force to slay and maim. But even that resistance crumbled away in time.

He complained that only animals yammered and barked and made noises. Pure beings used no sound; they used only their minds. He taught me to feel his emotions, see his thoughts. To know his will and his whim from the subtle clues of those processes. Yet I could not speak mind to mind. He was always a bit frustrated by the 'yapping' I had to do.

But my will had been broken in every other thing. He would pit me against men, against women, armed and told that all they had to do was kill 'the blind girl' and they would be free. I lost count of how many died at my hands, beneath my blades. I had been told that if I listened to any entreaty, to any words at all from them, I would be punished for a week. It had taken only a dozen for me to believe it.

He had told me that they would try to kill me, and if they succeeded because of my own failure, he would shed no tears over it. But if I tried to let them kill me he would know it; I would have my arms and legs ripped off and I would live like a vegetable unable to feed or clean myself as long as they could sustain me. He drew me into one of his torture chambers where someone that had failed him that abjectly lived now in his sixth year. Then he had tormented me not for a week, but for a month

When he was assured that he could touch my mind wherever I was in the Galaxy, he began to send me out. A silent assassin that needed no light, no spark of detection beyond the Force.

All I wanted was peace. Not the peace of my long dead family and people. Not the peace that humans seem to think can be won by merely holding each other in open arms. I wanted the peace of the earth, the soil filling every crevice, of the weight of soil above my body. To know that my nightmare of a life was finally over.

He denied me this. He knew it was the one wish I still had under his tutelage, but he held it out to me like a sweet just outside of a child's reach. When I had done all he wanted me to do, he would grant me that boon. I murdered, tortured, injured, hoping that one more would be the last, that finally he would reach out, touch my mind, and shut me off like a droid that is of no more use.

For the last month or so he had been worried about something. He had spoken an actual word to me when that worry came.

Search.

I had felt the webs of the Force, and had done it every day for several hours. There had been a quiver about that long ago, something so slight that I had not even been sure that it had been real. But today it was the full fledged shiver of an insect caught in the web of the Force. An insect that I would be sent to find, and to kill.

There. My mental fingers ran along the web, finding places where it was interconnected, running down them.

Yes. She, for it was a woman, was there. I could feel the cool color of her hair, the darker somber colors of her clothing. The deep angry darkness of her past. The emptiness of spirit. That which my master had in abundance, yet did not allow in any others.

I stood, smoothing my scarlet dress. I had known it was a dark cloth but he had been the one to tell me it was scarlet, and that it was a dark shade of red. Color had meant nothing to us. My life had taught me that the lighter the color, the less it sustained in heat when light shined upon it. My master seemed to feel that black was too good for me. One day he had decreed that I would wear reds, and nothing darker or lighter. I had returned to my quarters to discover that someone had patiently packed away all of the other colors, and from that day on, I was his Red Hand.

We were on a ship. I knew this because unlike a station, a ship moves more rapidly. My master stood before the cold brilliance of the clearsteel panels that lead from the warmth of the ship to the icy waste beyond. If I had still possessed the will I would have shattered that panel, allowed myself to finally feed the chill I desired more than anything. I could feel his amusement.

"I felt it too, my lord. A disturbance in the Force. But so soft... As if she it does not know she has it."

He questioned my abilities. Was I really that weak?

"It was such a gentle thing at first, my lord. As if it were an echo kilometers away. Yet as I felt it now, I wonder if it has always been there, and only now it is loud enough for my senses to hear.

"The sound of it built so slowly, so gently, but now it echoes even above the strains of the Galaxy's own song."

I felt something I had never felt before from him. Fear.

"Do you think it is a threat-"

I felt his Force hand close, choking me. Whatever it was, it terrified him! As much as I wanted to die, this was not what he would give me. Torment had no purpose.

"You... are the darkness that eats all life." I gasped.

He released me, and I collapsed abjectly to my knees.

"All that lives is there for your touch, for the death you bring, and the power you gain from that death. All life is yours... My life is yours. Please, grant me what you have given so many others. Let me die, I beg you." The mantra he had made me speak ever since he discovered that I considered death my only salvation.

I felt negation. I had not yet earned my rest. He sent what he wished, and I remained kneeling. "As you bid master. I will track down this disturbance, find it, and bring it to you.

He allowed me to stand.

"I will leave at once my lord."