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Am I out of touch? Am I out of my place?
When I keep saying that I’m looking for an empty space
Oh, I’m wishing your here but I’m wishing you’re gone
...
Am I out of luck? Am I waiting to break?
When I keep saying that I’m looking for a way to escape
-Imagine Dragons, “Shots”
*****
“You look cold,” Cere said the moment Cal set foot on the Mantis.
“Oh?” Cal made a sound that was half-scoff, half-laugh. “I hadn’t noticed.” The endless and boundless warmth he had felt back in Ilum’s caverns was stil present, although only inwardly. Through his trek back to the Mantis, the wet snow had long since melted and soaked into his clothing. He had long lost feeling in his appendages, and the biting chill was starting to work its way up through his calves and forearms.
“At least wipe your shoes off on the doormat, kid,” Greez commented. “You’re tracking snow all over my floor.”
“You don’t have a doormat,” Cal said, shaking the snow out of his hair.
Greez opened his mouth, then paused. “Well, I suppose I don’t. I’ll have to get one, so my comment will still stand for later… “he continued muttering to himself as he headed for the cockpit. “Hey, where to next?”
“Dathomir,” Cal called. “We need to go back to Dathomir.”
Greez made a face. “Don’t know why you’d want to go there in the first place. ‘Specially don’t know why you’d want to go back… “
“We need to make another stop before we get to there,” Cere said, surveying Cal. “You might like to have something else to wear.”
“Right,” Cal agreed. “I’m soaked.” The heat of the Mantis had begun to seep through the clothing, and now his fingers felt as though they were burning as feeling returned to them.
Cere chuckled. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“Then- ?” Oh yeah. He was still wearing the Inquisitor’s uniform. “Yeah. Right. That’s what you meant. I knew that.”
“Does it not bother you to wear it again?”
Cal shrugged. “It’s just clothes.” Wet, soggy clothes that were sticking to his burning skin and making him more uncomfortable than anything. “It’s not even the real uniform.”
“Ah.” Cere nodded slowly. The Mantis hummed around them as it lifted into Ilum’s atmosphere, bound for Dathomir. “What happened to the real one?”
“It was generously donated to a Tatooinian Sarlaac Pit.”
Clearly taken aback by the response, Cere nodded slowly again. “You seem… “she paused, as if deciding on the right word” …brighter,” she eventually said. “I would ask if it was a success, but I can see that it was.”
Cal removed the saber from his belt and held it out to her. Cere reached for it, but her hand paused midair. “You kept the ring?”
Cal froze. “Yeah.” His heart fell. “I- “he started to pull the saber back. “I did, I- “ Unsure of what to say, his words stuck in his throat.
Cere’s hand darted out, landing on the saber’s hilt just above Cal’s. Cal slipped his grip off it. Cere turned it over in her hands. She held it out in front of her and activated it, illuminating the room with purple light.
Greez poked his head from around the cockpit. “Wow,” he commented. “That’s new… “
Cere deactivated the saber. “You’ve done well, Cal.” She passed the saber back to him, then turned and headed for the cockpit, leaving nothing but open space in the air between them.
“Mind the ship, will you?” Greez asked as Cere took the copilot’s position, sliding out of his own chair. “You!” He pointed a finger at Cal. “You come with me. Can’t have you dripping all over my floor. Or, at least if you’re going to do it, stay in one place. Come on.” He motioned for Cal to follow him to the back of the ship.
Cal’s eyes stayed on the cockpit, at Cere’s turned back. BD whistled from his shoulders that he was going to go keep an eye on her, then hopped off and skittered over.
“Now, I don’t have any clothes for a human about your size,” Greez was saying as Cal caught up to him, “but I do have something back here, at least a heater I know. Hate for you to die of hypothermia when I just started to like you.” After some digging through a back closet, Greez presented him with a towel and a small space heater. “Now, I hate to be that person, but I’m going to be. You look dead and half-drowned. You get some rest. I’ll come get you when we get there.”
“Get where, exactly?”
“Got an old friend who runs an outpost around here. Way too small to be noticed by the Imperial eye. She’ll take care of us.” And with that, he left Cal alone.
Cal looked at the cot, and then the floor next to it. His body was exhausted, but his mind was alive and buzzing. Too much so to even think about sleeping, despite the soreness creeping into his limbs as feeling returned to them. Besides, his clothes were still soaked. Did he really want to risk soaking the cot fabric as well?
A lame excuse for what he did next, but an excuse nonetheless. It was how he found himself on the floor with his back against the cot, the towel wrapped around his shoulders with the heater on, slowly warming the room.
Cal stared aimlessly at the floor, his mind blank for the first time in a long time. For many years, for so long, the constant turmoil had been there like an ever-present, ever-broiling storm. Not since before the Empire, before the Purge, had his head been so quiet. Sounded like nothing. No voices pulling him one way or another. No influence making him do something he did not want to do. Just silence.
He might be one of the few left of his kind, of the Jedi. He had felt isolated before, but not quite like this. Never had he felt so alone, and somehow, that terrified him. Had this not been what he always wanted, what he dreamed of, since that first vision of his master? To have his mind to himself and not to anyone else?
Anyone else… but had the Fourth Brother really ever been anyone else, though?
Cal sighed, dropping his face into his hands. Maybe his mind would be clearer once he got out of the soaking Inquisitor’s uniform. Although it had initially bothered him, he knew that it was nothing more than clothes. Just fabric — fabric that no longer meant anything to him, that no longer defined him.
He leaned his head back against the cot, staring up at the ceiling. In the silence, something else was starting to seep in. Something deep-rooted and hollow in his chest. As if somehow, he had made a mistake somewhere.
Well, he had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but this had nothing to do with any of them. This was something else…
He could hear screaming, somewhere in the distance. Horrid, wretched sounds tearing from someone’s throat. They echoed off the walls, resonating deep within him. Whoever they were, they were in pain, more pain that words could ever possibly describe. No, not just the physical pain. Pain drawn deep from the soul as it was ripped to shreds and torn apart piece by piece, broken down into less than nothing.
Someone crying out somewhere in the void, begging for help. To please, not be left here, to please, not be left alone, to please, please, please, don’t leave me-
“Hey, kid.”
Cal came to at the sound of Greez’s voice and a tapping on his shoulder. At some point, Cal must have fallen asleep, where he had heard the voice in the darkness. “We’re almost here.”
The engine room was almost obnoxiously warm by now, enough that it nearly lulled him back into sleep. “Right,” he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Right.”
“And turn that thing off before you set the Mantis on fire,” Greez threw over his shoulder as he left. “Fire and space travel do not mix.”
“Right,” Cal muttered groggily, pulling his tired and sore self to his feet, “right… “he switched off the heater and headed out of the engine room, the lingering feeling that he had made a mistake in the back of his mind.
BD hopped up onto his shoulders as he headed down the ramp and outside. The small outpost Greez’s friend ran was a space station orbiting a moon, which itself orbited a gas giant. Exactly what moon, what gas giant, and where exactly he was in the galaxy, Cal did not know nor could he imagine. Perhaps it was time he finally put some trust into the people around him to not lead him astray.
He expected a biting comment from the Fourth Brother, arguing that Greez had been tangled up in shady business before and had nearly gotten Cal killed once. That it was foolish to let his guard down this much and let himself be this vulnerable for once.
But it never came. All he had was the eerie silence.
Cere waited for him at the base of the ramp. Over toward the docking bay controls, Cal spotted a squat square-shaped Trandoshan woman talking to Greez. His friend, Cal assumed.
“Greez has some… colorful associates,” Cere said, “as I’m sure you know by now. I’m not the fondest of this one, but she’ll keep her silence for a favor and a good price.”
“And what is that price?”
Cere started to answer, but she paused when the Trandoshan freaked upon seeing Cal, still in the full Inquisitor get-up. “What’s this about huh?” She shoved a finger into Greez’s chest. “What are you bringing to my station? The Brood’s brats, I can handle, but I’m done with the Empire and their dogs sticking their noses into my business! Tell them one thing, and they think you owe them forever… “
Cal stopped a few paces away. Tell them one thing? He shot Greez a questioning look.
Greez slapped her hand away from his chest and sized himself up — all three feet of himsef. “Hey, hey. Watch what you say. Don’t call him that. You don’t know anything about him.” He gestured to Cal. “How do you know this guy didn’t kill one of them and take their uniform?”
“Because that would be disgusting,” Cal replied before the Trandoshan could.
Greez’s lips flattened into a thin line. “The things I try to do for you, kid.”
The Trandoshan’s beady eyes studied him up and down. “So, what made you throw in your lot with the Empire, Greezy? Got too desperate with the Brood?”
Cere cleared her throat, shooting Greez a look that said We don’t have time for this.
Greez waved his hands. “Doesn’t matter. What does is that I can pay you for your services.”
The Trandoshan crossed her arms. “Which are?”
“How does some fuel for the Mantis, a set of clothes for my friend here, and some shush on our whereabouts to anyone who might have questions sound?”
The Trandoshan considered this. “The first two, easy. The last one, might be a little harder.”
“Name your price.” Greez grinned.
The grin immediately dropped when she did.
“That’s outrageous!” Greez exclaimed.
The Trandoshan shrugged. “You’re asking me to keep my silence from the Empire and the Brood. Not easy when they have more sway than you ever will.”
Cere let out a light, exasperated sigh. “Which is why I argued against coming here,” she muttered in Cal’s ear.
Greez glanced back at Cere and Cal, panic in his eyes. “Come on. Drop your price a little. I’ll- I’ll bring you something grand and good for it?” He finished it, lips peeled back into a sheepish, pleading, strained grin.
“No,” the Trandoshan replied unflinchingly.
Greez opened his mouth again.
“What about a favor?” Cal asked before Greez could dig them into a deeper hole.
All eyes suddenly turned to Cal. He could sense Greez and Cere pleading with him to retract the statement. The Trandoshan only scoffed. “Last thing I need is another entanglement with the Empire.”
But, her interest was piqued. Cal could feel that much around the peripheries of her mind. Her mind was also strong, he noted. Forcing his own will over others, it used to be easy. That was not something he could stomach to do anymore. However, suggestion was a different story, especially since her mind was already primed to the idea of that.
“I’m not with the Empire,” Cal continued, pushing his own suggestion at the barriers to her mind. “Not anymore. It wouldn’t hurt if you needed something that no one else could get.”
(He expects to hear it, the other voice. The Fourth Brother, pushing against his own will, desperate to take over. And, yet again, there is nothing.)
Tension visibly seeped out of the Trandoshan’s body. Although her arms remained crossed, the act was more casual than confrontational. “What kind of favor?”
Cal shrugged. “Whatever you need. Whenever you need it.”
She eyed him up and down again. “You that desperate for new clothes?” Before he could respond, she laughed. “You drive a good bargain. Whatever you may be, a favor from you might be a good one to have… “
“Are you crazy?” Greez asked once the Trandoshan started off to retrieve the pit droids for fueling. “She is not the kind of person you want to owe anything. We can go get fuel and stuff elsewhere- “
“It’s fine, Greez.” Cal rested a hand on his shoulder. “Really, it’s okay. Whatever it might be, I can handle it.”
“What dealings with the Empire has she had before?” Cere said. The Trandoshan motioned to them, and they moved over as a group. “You never mentioned that.”
“She’s had dealings with everyone,” Greez replied. “The Empire, Crimson Dawn, the Haxion Brood, whoever you can imagine. What they are, she’s never said.”
“And you still trust her?”
Greez shrugged. “As far as trust can go in this galaxy.” His eyes widened, and he suddenly grabbed Cal’s hand. “Kid, you know I would never put you in danger of going back to the Empire, right? You know- “
“Greez.”
He stopped.
Cal nodded. “I know.”
Greez only offers him an unsure nod back as they follow the Trandoshan woman into the station. Before they leave, the Mantis all fueled and Cal with something else to wear aside from the Inquisitor’s uniform, the Trandoshan catches him and passes him a comlink. “You ever hear that thing ring, I need you, and I need you stat. Got it?”
“Right. Of course,” Cal replied half-heartedly before heading back to the Mantis.
“Do you think she’ll keep her promise?” Cere asked Greez as the Mantis took off from the station bound for Dathomir. “Will a favor be enough to keep her at bay?”
“Might be, I’m not sure.” Greez shrugged. “At least we didn’t tell her where we were going.”
BD-1 whistled from his place on to control console, turning a circle as Cal stepped back into the cockpit. “Looking sharp, kid.” He good-naturedly slapped Cal on the arm as he slipped back into the copilot’s seat. “How does it feel to be out of those old Inquisitor rags?”
Cal considered his answer for a moment. “Weird,” he decided on, and that was all he said. The word felt too empty and too much at the same time.
He stayed quiet in their journey back to Dathomir, listening to Cere and Greez’s banter. Both of their moods seemed lighter. He heard more laughs and saw more grins and smiles from Cere than he had previously. Greez looked as though a massive weight had been lifted off his chest. Although he voiced his fears about returning to Dathomir, most of them seemed in jest rather than being serious.
“Any bets on what’ll happen this time? More dead things? Giant spiders? Killer plants?” Greez turned to Cal. “Serious question.”
“I’m not a betting man, Greez.” Luck had never been on his side.
“Just joking with you.”
When they land on Dathomir, Cere only offered him a, “Good luck,” before Cal headed back out onto the planet.
Nothing had changed. The sky was still a dusky purple and red, the sand and rocks still that same plain color. But the unsual cold now felt distant. The cold that had once been a constant companion, always there, always surrounding him, always protecting him, now, somewhere else. Somewhere that was far away from Cal.
His hand strayed to his saber as he trekked back to the Tomb of Kujet. A strange void settled deep in his chest, in every fiber of his being.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and he was not alone. Despite his intial reaction to wheel and draw his saber, he shoved the urge down, instead remaining calm as green flames ignited in the air several feet in front of him. A slight cold wind hit his face as the Nightsister stepped out of the green light. Her hood was down now, and Cal saw that she was much younger than he had initially thought. Malicos said she was a child when her people had been slaughtered, but she had carried a much more ancient air to her when he first encountered her. Now, he saw that she could not be much older than he was.
“You returned,” she said.
Cal’s hand drifted away from his saber. “I did.”
Her head tilted. “You are not hard to track now. You feel different than this place.” And without another word, she disappeared in another flash of green.
Keep an eye out? BD-1 asked.
“Probably,” Cal replied.
He saw no sign of Malicos as he crossed the path and up the stairs to the tomb’s golden door. The cold was there the closer he got, so intense and powerful and painful. Yet, the sensation was distant, as if it were music being played from another room. A scream heard from across a chasm.
The flash of light shone through the crack in the door. Cal drew in a breath, reaching out to touch it as the world dropped out from underneath him.
He was back in the cavern, dark and stretching on for as far as the eye could see, the edges of his vision layered in the thick misty fog. BD’s familiar weight was once again missing from his shoulders.
Footsteps echoed through the cavern. Cal looked up to where the ghost of Jaro Tapal was walking toward him.
“Master.” Cal got to his own feet.
His master stopped, thinly veiled disgust behind his eyes. “You were wrong to return here unarmed.”
Cal drew his saber from his belt. “I’m not unarmed.”
Master Tapal’s dismissive eyes fell upon it. “You think that lightsaber proves you a Jedi? Tarnished by what you let them do to you?”
“No,” Cal replied. “Facing you, the memories that have haunted me since then. Facing him… I won’t run from them anymore.”
Master Tapal remained silent, then — “Then let us see what manner of death your courage brings.” His saber ignited, the crack-hiss echoing through the cavern and bathing it in blue light, as his master charged at Cal, saber raised, swinging for his head-
In his mind’s eye, Cal saw the Second Sister again, bloodred blade swinging for him with all the intent to kill, to rid the world of a black scourge of a creature. He saw Vader’s blade swinging up to take his arm, a piece of himself he will never be able to get back. Caleb’s blue blade, slicing across his mask, the facade he carried, tearing it off and revealing the true monster he had become underneath. The monster they all saw, the monster that Master Tapal would have been ashamed the boy he died to save had become-
All he had ever felt in those moments was fear.
His master’s blade stopped just inches above his head, the heat searing off his skin. Despite the bright light, he had no trouble meeting Tapal’s eyes, ones that were watching him intently. “Master,” Cal said, voice somehow steady. “I will never forget. The loss has become a part of me. I will honor your teachings and your sacrifice, but… I can’t let him go.”
His master held the saber there for a moment longer, then stepped back, the dismissiveness in his eyes turning to acceptance. “Remember,” he said, turning and starting away from Cal, “persistence reveals the path.”
His master faded into the fog. It dissipated, and light came back to the world. BD-1’s weight dropped back onto his shoulders. The world around him rumbled as the door to Kujet’s tomb lifted, revealing the path beyond.
Okay? BD-1 asked.
“Yeah,” Cal said, feeling as though a weight had been lifted off his chest. “I’m alright.” Drawing in a breath to steady his resolve, he stepped into the tomb.
We shouldn’t be here, an echo in the voice of the Nightsister said as Cal passed. Her cold fear tingled at the base of Cal’s neck. This place is cursed.
Don’t be scared, Malicos’s voice hissed back. We have a deal. You promised to teach me your Magicks.
She had felt as if she had no choice. As if this was her only chance of survival, out alone in the world.
You didn’t have a choice, Cere had told him.
He passed through, over chasms and across bridges, squeezing through the rocks, until he reached a large open chamber. Across the way, he felt a dark, cold, familiar presence.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood again. “Your choice to return,” the Nightsister’s voice echoed in his mind. “Brave- “he turned as she once again apparted in a flash of green flame” -but not wise.”
Cal shrugged. “Maybe. Merrin, right?” Her head cocked to the side, and he knew that name was correct. “I’m Cal Kestis.” The name felt strangely good to say, to truly know and understand was his own.
He noticed her eyeing his saber. “What you were told about the Jedi is not true.”
“So you say,” she spat back, “Cal. Malicos said many things too.”
“Taron Malicos might have been a part of the Order, but what he is now, I… I have no idea. I do know that having a lightsaber isn’t what makes you a Jedi.”
Against his better judgment, he tossed it to her — the ultimate sign of goodwill. She caught it, gaze never leaving him. “Then what does?”
“They were peacekeepers,” he explained. We was not the right word to use, not now. “They were betrayed by those they protected. Hunted down by the Empire. Those who are out there might be the last of them.”
Her eyes narrowed, then she ignited his saber. “I was only a child when they attacked. An armored warrior brandishing this descended upon us. Cut down my people. My sisters. Until I was left alone, with the dead.” Her face darkened. “Then, Malicos came. Promised me revenge if I shared our secrets with him in return.”
“I know what it’s like to lose everything. Malicos was wrong to use that against you.”
She deactivated the saber, still warily eyeing him. “You said you are no Jedi. You were proud of it too. I felt that darkness around you. Yet, you still stand here and defend them. You talk almost as if you want to be one.”
“Someday, I’ll earn that right again.” Maybe.
After another moment’s hesitation, she tossed the saber back to him. “You will need this,” she said. “Malicos lies ahead. You could turn back.”
“I can’t.” Cal holstered the saber. “Lives are at stake.”
“Who?”
“Innocents. Force-senstitive children who’ll be hunted down and murdered.”
“As we were,” she said. Her eyes flickered over Cal’s shoulder to where he knew the dark presence that was Malicos was. “Go, if you must. Be careful.” She vanished into the green flames again.
Cal started across the way, closer and closer to the dark, twisted, and familiar presence. Not familiar because he had encoutered Malicos once previously, but because it felt the same as the Fourth Brother. Perhaps that is why he had never sensed Malicos before.
Malicos turned as he approached, arms held wide. “You’ve returned,” he said, “Inquisitor.”
Cal stopped several paces away.
“You may not wear it now,” Malicos pointed at him, “but I recognized the uniform. I remember what they did. Who they killed. How relentlessly they chased me. Maybe you were one of the ones who did so.”
“There were more memorable ones out there than you,” Cal replied acidly.
“Welcome home,” Malicos spoke as if Cal had not. “Welcome home… forgive me, but I believe I do not know your name. What was it they called you with the Inquisitorius?”
“Why is that something you want to know?”
“Because I know why you are here.” Cal raised an eyebrow. “You realized I was right. That you want to control that power, that this temple offers you that power, and you returned to begin your training. That side of you, that is the only side that can harness it. So tell me, what did they call you?”
Cal hesitated, hands clenching and unclenching. “The Fourth Brother.”
“The Fourth Brother.” Malicos breathed it as if it were some reverent, divine name. “What in these ruins tempts you so much to risk death?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“There is power here, power beyond Jedi understanding. Power that I can control, that I can offer to you. You must understand that power surely.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Cal said. “I’m not interested in power.” Even the Fourth Brother knew it had never been about that.
“Then what?” Malicos snapped. “The bloodlust? The hunger, the desire, to take life? I know you have felt it. I feel it to. This power satiates it in a way that no life every could.”
“No.” Cal shook his head. “I want to restore the Jedi Order.”
Malicos’s face twisted in disgust. “Restore the Order? Oh, you poor fool. It’s over! The Jedi fell long before the Purge. Stifled by tradition, deafened by our past glories, blinded by endless war.”
“Maybe,” Cal admitted, “but it’s never over. We stand here now with a chance to learn, to rebuild from our mistakes.”
“Mistakes?” Malicos scoffed. “You are one to talk of mistakes. How many? How many of them did you kill before you came to that conclusion? The Jedi, learn?” Another scoffed. “There’s no future for them! How can you not see that? It’s time for something new. You and me.” He pointed at himself, then Cal, as he started to close the distance between them. “We can build something new. Something better.”
“No.” He was done letting his fear control him.
Malicos’s eyes flashed yellow. A dark shadow fell over the room as he drew his two sabers, one in each hand, and ignited the red blades. “Then Dathomir will be your grave.”
Cal’s hand went to his own saber and ignited it as he lunged.
He was different than any other fighter Cal had faced. Different from the Purge Troopers, from Caleb and the other Jedi, from the Second and Ninth Sisters. His hits were heavy and vicious, the weight of each blow slamming down onto Cal’s saber with enough force he believed it might slip out of his hands. Now, Cal moved lighter on his feet, faster than he had before. Enough to dodge and parry Malicos’s blows, to ignore his taunts.
“All your talk to running away and rebuilding the order,” Malicos snarled as they came into a bladelock, “of playing Jedi, and look at your saber! You keep such a reminder of what they did to you?”
Cal dared to take a hand off the saber and shoved it into Malicos’s chest, sending him flying back. Malicos caught himself on his feet, digging his saber blades into the ground to catch himself.
Cal shook himself, readying for the next blow. The spinning ring — they were all obsessed with it. What was once forced upon him was now his choice, Cal’s choice, to keep. A piece of every part of himself, pieces he would not let go of.
Malicos thrusted his hand out. Cal’s body went stiff, an invisible force grabbing him by the sternum. Malicos raised his hand, and Cal was lofted into the air. “I was wrong to think you could stand with me.”
The force dropped him, and Cal slammed into the ground. BD-1 dove off his shoulders. The air whooshed out of his lungs in a wheeze as the impact shattered across his body. His head cracked against the rock, stars exploding in his vision. Any thought of who he was, what he had been doing, vanished instantly.
The force now pinned his arms and legs to the ground. He could not move. Malicos raised another hand, drawing a piece of rock from a nearby spire and bringing it to hover over Cal.
He saw it again, the arena. The spire fell in slow motion, gradually coming closer and closer. He saw Pango the bounty hunter ripping one of BD’s legs off. He searched for the hand in the void, offering it his own this time. It was there, he swore it was, reaching back but hesitantly, unsurely-
The rock exploded into green. The hold on Cal suddenly dropped, and he fell back into himself.
Malicos wheeled to where Merrin stood on a nearby spire, her hands alight with green flame. “You have no right to Dathomir, Malicos! No right to our magic!” She hurtled two glowing spheres at him.
He parried both with his sabers, then tossed one toward the spire, slicing through the rock. The saber flew back through the cut and into Malicos’s hand, sending the spire tumbling.
Merrin dove off into the flame again before it could hit the ground, reappearing on the ground. “Get up, Cal Kestis,” she ordered. “You do not die yet.”
He kicked back over to his feet, summoning his saber. It activated the moment it touched his palm.
Malicos let out a war cry and thrusted his hands upward, raising three rocks from the fallen spire. He tossed each one in quick succession, which Cal dodged and sliced apart. Merrin appeared to Malicos’s right, throwing a volley of flame at him before disappearing again.
“Hardly felt that!” Malicos shouted into the void.
They went on like that, taking their own shots at Malicos individually. Despite the assault, he showed no signs of letting up. “You delay the inevitable!” Malicos shouted at Cal. “It’s there, I know it is!” He threw another rock, catching Cal in the chest and sending him flying back.
Cal landed hard on his side, rolling out of the way as another rock slammed into the place where he had been breaths earlier.
“Only cowards run,” Malicos hissed.
The switched fell into place. The void grabbed his hand and let Cal yank him into the light.
Malicos’s force signature was heavy on his hands, dark, cold, tinted with red. He reached out and took hold of it.
Malicos suddenly froze, fidgeting midair like a real-life computer glitch. The terror tingled at the base of his neck, mixed with confusion.
You didn’t have a choice.
“I’m no coward,” he snarled at Malicos. The cold fear amplified, so cold that it burned.
Merrin appeared in another flash of green light, a hand outstretched. He released his hold over Malicos as she took over, the void retreating, Cal falling back into himself.
Malicos returned to real-time, surrounded by the green flame, as he fells to his knees. “What- what is this?” he demanded as his arms were forced to his sides.
The green flames rose the rock around Malicos, up over his legs and torso. No, not rising — drawing him in. Sinking him down.
“As you said,” Merrin spat, “Dathomir will be your grave.”
Malicos shouted, but whether from anger or terror, Cal could not tell. It did not matter, as a second later, he was sunk beneath the rock, never to make a sound again.
“Let him lie in the dark with his secrets,” Merrin said as Cal approached her, “until death takes him.”
“Why did you help me?”
“To rid Dathomir of that parasite.” Her gaze remained trained on the spot Malicos had disappeared. “He called you an Inquisitor.”
Cal froze. “He did. Do you- “
“Know what they are?” She looked to him. “I do. I have seen them. Not only did he tell me of them, but they chased him here. Is that why you no longer call yourself a Jedi? Why you feel as though you must earn the right to call yourself one again someday?”
Slowly, Cal nodded, his heart sinking. Would she think him a hypocrite, spouting all these things about the Jedi only to have turned on his own kind and killed countless of them? Would she believe him to be just like Malicos, someone who had fallen to his own selfish desires and let them control him?
“There is a cold to you, Cal Kestis. A cold like Malicos- “(his heart plummeted through the ground)” -but yours if different.” (It lifted back up slightly.) “His was selfish. Lustful. Angry. Yours is angry too, but it is also in pain. Lost, and afraid.” Her eyes went distant. “You must think me weak for having an allyship with Malicos.”
“No.” Cal shook his head, daring to take a step closer to her. “Like I said, he used what you had lost against you. He gave you no choice.”
“Did this Empire give you no choice?”
Not in the same way. His voice stuck in his throat. She took his lack of response to mean yes. “What is it you seek here, Cal Kestis?”
“The ones who built this tomb, the Zeffo, they created an object called an Astrium,” he explained, voice unsticking. “It opens a vault on a distant planet. Inside is a list of Force-sensitive children across the galaxy. The Empire is looking for it too.”
“The Empire which gave you no choice?”
He nodded.
“An Empire like Malicos.” She went quiet for a moment. “I will help you find this Astrium,” she said with final resolve. Resolve that said he was not to argue with her on that.
And he found it, just across the way. The Astrium, the key to the vault on Bogano, to the holocron and the end of his quest, in his hands.
“It is real,” Merrin commented as Cal hurried toward her, suddenly so excited to show someone else what he found, like a child discovering a seashell at the beach.
“This could be it,” Cal said. “The key to the next generation of Jedi.”
She nodded. “I’m happy for you and your Jedi. But nothing can bring back my people.” She turned and started away. A part of him wilted watching her retreating back. She did not deserve to remain here alone, not after all that.
“They tortured me.” The words spilled out of his mouth. Merrin stopped. “The Empire, they took everything piece of me that was myself. They left me with nothing. After I escaped, I didn’t know who I was. I lived in fear of the Empire finding me again, of people finding out what I was. What I’d done.”
She turned back halfways. “What changed?”
Prauf’s last moments, standing up to something bigger than him. Proving himself a better person than Cal ever was. Proving himself to be the person Cal could be if he just took that first step. “A very good friend of mine told me to go out and find my place in the galaxy.”
“And you listened?”
Cal shrugged. “Well, no, but… life has this funny way of forcing you on the path forward anyway. Now here I am — where I least expected.”
Merrin had fully turned around now. “A path forward.” She nodded. “I will join you.”
BD-1 whistled in surprise. Cal blinked. “You will?” he said rather stupidly.
She nodded again. “I have been waiting for years. Waiting for a chance to avenge my sisters. I’m finished waiting. I wish to fight by your side. Nightsisters and Jedi do not travel together, but survivors? We adapt.”
Survivors.
“Yeah,” Cal agreed. “We do.”