Ask Like Calls

[Nicolae Locke]

Eadu was every bit the dank shitstain Nicolae had heard it was. Clusters of dense thunderstorms tore across the planet's stratosphere, wreathing it in shadows broken only by the occasional flash of lightning. Yet even in the storm's harsh lashes, he didn't flinch. He stared down at the little bunker dug into the side of the cliff, wind whipping his robes up behind him. His targets were in there. He could feel their fear. They knew retribution was coming.

No survivors.

Those had been Darth Stolas' orders. After, the Sith attending the ball had gone to do just that. But while they were on more well-known rat's nests for the cult of Darth Malicia, Nicolae had located a more well-hidden infestation. Malicia's cult had hidden here, thinking they had escaped the Order's radar. Ironically, they thought to hide from the worst of the storm from within a storm, not knowing that the true storm was coming.

Nicolae shrugged out of his robes, down to just his tunic, and leaped, letting the Force guide his fall. He landed with a wet thunk in the mud, and the outside lookouts jerked their gazes in his direction. With a flourish of his wrists, he summoned the planet's natural darkness. His powers thrived here. Under the wrath of Eadu's storms, his magic was virtually limitless. He smothered the fools in shadows, until they could not even make out their own hands in front of their faces. Until their knuckles were white with fear around the stocks of their guns.

"Let the games begin," he said.

One fired and missed terribly. Inside his black curtain, it was nearly impossible get off an accurate shot. He waited just long enough, until the fear was eating them alive. Then a crimson blade lanced out of the darkness and set their minds at peace. As their bodies crumpled, his shadows swirled away, clumping around the outside cameras that would allow those inside to predict his next moves.

None of that, he thought, and plunged inside. @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

Lyra drifted out of the shuttle, a leaf on the wind, studying the scenery laid out before her like an open book. This visit was a first, but she had read plenty about Eadu in the archives back at the temple, everything from its scattershot atmosphere to the dark thunderstorms that drenched the canyons in black. The records certainly hadn’t been wrong. Seeing it with her own eyes, it was clear this place was not one worth visiting again.

“This world reeks of piss and iron,” Lila said, the Padawan standing a little too close beside her for comfort, her blonde mop of hair flapping against the harsh wind.

“I think that’s just you,” Lyra whispered.

“What did you say?” said Lila, but it was obvious she’d heard her the first time and was only challenging her to say it again. Personally, she didn’t give two flying—

“Quiet,” said Master Kell.

Lyra rolled her eyes. Since the whole disaster with Master Zapan, she’d been relegated to the role of an accessory, passed between knights and masters to train and learn the ways of the Force. Some missions involved her remaining with the ship. Most consisted of simple observation. And for all of them, she wanted nothing more than to smash her head against a wall.

She’d been lucky Master Kell was generous enough to have her actively participating in this next mission—something about rooting out Sith cultists hiding on the planet—but she only wished his and Lila's presence wasn't so unbearably suffocating. Kell had the personality of wet cardboard, and his padawan always felt the need to either complain or to champion her importance to the galaxy.

She only prayed this mission would at least be somewhat eventful, if only to make their company worthwhile.

 

[Nicolae Locke]

"You can't do this," strangled a hooded member of Malicia's flock, one of the unfortunate few to be near the door when he entered. "When Mother learns..."

The ghost of a smile tugged at Nicolae's lips. All his life, he had been told what he could not do. His father was keen to remind him of his lowly birth, the shackles it put on him. But his chains had been broken by the power thrumming in his veins. The invisible power holding the cultist up by the neck. Now, there was no one left to deny him. Certainly not this wretch. And there was nothing he could not do.

"Your mother is feeding flies and gnats in a prison cell on Dromund Kaas," Nicolae said, reveling in the horror that roiled through his captive. "I could take you to her. The both of you could share a cell. Just tell me where I can find more of your sisters."

The cultist bucked, fighting his grip. The breath was leaving her. She perhaps had enough left in her for a single answer. She wasted it. "I don't—"

Nicolae closed his fist, felt tendon and bone pop and twist under his invisible grip, and then she fell lifeless into a puddle at his feet. As his eyes swept up from his handiwork, he caught the gaze of another fanatic a few paces down the corridor. For a moment, they were both frozen.

"There are more of you," Nicolae said, finally. "You're out there, hiding like vermin in the cracks. All of you fugitives from justice. Spreading your lies, infecting others, infecting valuable Force users. Tell me where to find your sisters, and I will spare you." He spread his arms wide, bringing them slowly together. Shadows wriggled from the corner of the room, following the wake of his arms. "Or make the mistake of your comrades, and join them in the night."

He had to respect her answer. "You can't take all of us."

She pulled a lever on the wall. An alarm blared throughout the facility. He slashed his arm, releasing a cut of darkness that split her in two. "We'll just see about that."

He spread his arms, summoning power from his frustration and anger, then let darkness pour out of him like a thick ink. It spread through every corridor like a plague, killing all light, leaving only sound. "Now, let us see how well you bluster in the dark." @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

Mud splashing at her shoes, she trailed Lila and Master Kell through the storm. Her hair, an inky slice of night, thrashed against the wind. Her ruddy cheeks felt cold and rock solid. Rain stung her squinting eyes. She’d barely made it five steps out of the ship and already wanted to turn back inside, maybe curl up against a heater, read one of the dozen manuscripts she’d packed in her bag prior to the journey to Eadu. Hyperspace travel wasn’t instant after all, and she’d had zero intentions to befriend Lila.

“Are we coming up to the bunker?” she asked Master Kell.

“Try to practice patience, Padawan Jiang. We aren’t far.”

Lyra wanted to slap the smirk off Lila’s face. Why must she be so insistent on acting like a child? Dark thoughts of pushing the girl into the mud, or perhaps over the nearby cliffside, circled her mind until she smacked directly into Master Kell. She let out a short oof.

“Why are we stopping?” said Lila. “What is it, Master?”

He lifted a warning hand. His eyes were focused ahead, as if they could pierce the veil of night and rain that had descended over the ridge. “I sense a disturbance in the Force.”

And I’m sensing a fungal infection in the near future if we don’t get out of this muck and onto dry land, she thought bitterly. But those thoughts were cut in two by the muffled sound of an alarm. No blaring lights, but it echoed against the stone walls ahead. They were close. Dangerously close. If she closed her eyes, she could sense the disturbance too, like a snarl in the dark.

But when she opened them, it was there again. A snarl. A hiss.

Lyra turned just in time to see a scaled, winged creature jump out of a cavern, out of nowhere, and descend onto Master Kell.

 

[Nicolae Locke]

He had them on the run.

The fear was thick in the air, like the iron smell of blood after a battle. The flock had remained strong after the lights went out, clinging to the hope that the rumors from Dromund Kaas were not true. That their Mother was coming to rescue them, to burn out the heretic. By now, it was setting in that those hopes had been misplaced. They were hunted, livestock pursued by a predator with sharper teeth.

And then, something. A flicker in the Force, on and off like a glow moth's light. He paused to contemplate it, seeking the direction it had come from. What he sensed instead were other lifeforms, driven by hunger and rage, rather than the fear that had gripped their captors.

Abominations, he thought.

Wings beat in the dark. Nicolae spread his hands, spread his fingers, and peppered the creature with Sith lightning. Malevolent red energy spiderwebbed through the miasma of shadows, electrifying the monster's skin, frying its nerve endings. It howled in pain, feeding his power. Another came, and he let loose another cut of darkness to sever one of its wings, crumpling it to the ground. Using both hands, he crushed the skulls of the wounded beasts with the Force. He would not draw his saber again. He would not give them the pleasure of making him draw it.

"It will take more than this," he snarled, voice echoing down the corridor.

The control room had to be nearby. If they had not wiped the computers by the time he reached it, he would know where the other cultists could be found. Darth Stolas would reward him handsomely for their deaths and the capture of new intel. And he would take another step up the ladder towards the true power he desired. @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

Master Kell’s hand cut through the air, and in a blur of movement and light, he split the winged monster in half. Black blood spattered onto her cheeks and her jaw went slack in disgust, only for the rain to wash it away moments later. Lila was dumbstruck. Master Kell, to no surprise to anyone, showed no discerning emotion.

“Are you two okay?” he said. “We must be careful. There may be more—”

There was another flash of movement, a creature from the sky, or was it from below? She hadn’t any idea. One second she’d been staring at her newest master, skin pale in the drowsy light, and in the next, a headless corpse. Lightning burst across the sky. She spun to catch the monster that had decapitated Kell in a single swoop, its wings bloody and sharper than the edge of a knife. Her eyes widened in absolute terror.

Lila, on other hand, screamed like a manic. “Master Kell!” she cried, and charged the beast head on.

“Lila, wait!” shouted Lyra over the din of rain and thunder, but it was too late. The girl made it a few steps ahead before a third creature leapt out of another burrow in the cliffside, attracted to the light of her purple blade. Instead of swiftly beheading her, it opened its jaws to reveal the widest set of teeth Lyra had ever seen, before chewing right through the padawan’s neck.

The sound that came out of Lila’s throat was horrifying. A scream, a gurgle of blood. Death.

Lyra didn’t know what to do. All she knew was to run. To run as hard and as fast as she could through the storm and toward what she hoped would be safety or refuge. In reality, she’d find neither.

 

[Nicolae Locke]

The abominations were everywhere. Where did Malicia's sheep even get this many? The power to create them had been lost to the Sith for centuries, so he knew they weren't making them. And yet, these batlike creatures were hardly the work of a master Sith magician. They died too easily. Nicolae had killed seven in the short trip between the corridor and the control room. In there, there were no more monsters to protect the cultists.

He felt the hum of the monitors. Still on, they had not been destroyed. He also felt the frantic heartbeats of his soon-to-be victims, and he knew then they had failed their mission. The data was still his for the parsing.

"A valiant effort," he said to faces he could not see. He stretched his awareness out to the rest of the room, entangling his consciousness with the shadows he had created. "Alas, none of you have the Force. And that makes every single one of you expendable."

Fingers of darkness wrapped around the throats of the three cultists hiding in separate corners of the room. One under one of the big monitors, another under a long table, and the third was simply huddled over in the corner by the door. He willed his shadows to squeeze, so they did. Strangling noises filled the room.

And then death lanced through the Force. First one, then another, coming from the surface. He gave the Force a squeeze and ended the cultists' lives early, letting the shadows finally receded from the room. He eyed a turbolift at its far side. One that would undoubtably take him aboveground to the sources of the disturbances he was feeling.

The cultists around him were dead, the data secure. He had time to investigate. So, he stepped into the lift, tapped a command on the panel, and closed his eyes to focus as the lift took him up. @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

The world around her had dissolved into nightmare.

Spurts of lightning was all that revealed them, and when she cast her eyes to the clouds, she found a dozen of the creatures circling her like vultures. A bright thorn of regret stabbed into her side. Or was it a cramp? It had been years since she ran so hard, and suddenly Lyra wished she’d done more than stay cooped up in the archives, thumbing through ancient Jedi texts, collecting dust like everything else in the room.

She sucked in a hard breath. Master Kell was dead, and so was Lila. They’d been butchered, and she’d done nothing but watch. Even if she hadn’t been particularly fond of the pair, they were people. Members of the Jedi Order. What would the others back on Ajan Kloss say? Would she even make it back?

“I’m sorry,” she panted. “I’m sorry.”

An answer came in a gust of wings, by the writhing form of another abomination. But instead of being engulfed in dread or fear, she felt a rush of anger. Adrenaline poured through veins. She seized the lightsaber on her waist and in a flash of icy blue light, she decapitated the monster the same way it had Master Kell. Steam rolled off her blade, the pop and hiss of rain against plasma. A small taste of retribution.

There were more monsters to deal with, but there could be a hundred, a thousand, and she wouldn’t care. Lyra would fight them all if she had to. She still had so much to do with her life, so much more to accomplish and discover. Knighthood, unlocking the power trapped inside of her, the mystery of her parents. She had to see it all.

And I will.

A fourth abomination descended, and with an outstretched hand, she let out an pillar of light. The creature shrieked, blinded, and she took the opportunity to open its belly with the slash of her lightsaber.

 

[Nicolae Locke]

The turbolift swished open in time for Nicolae to catch the light show. The lift had indeed brought him to the surface. Another cliff, another part of the underground compound protruding from it. But for all its familiarity, it was a scene with different characters. Up ahead, a girl with a lit lightsaber was fighting off the same abominations he had faced not moments earlier below.

A Jedi, Nicolae realized, which explained the light.

A feeding frenzy was underway a few paces from the girl. It didn't take a genius to deduce that was where the death had come from. Her comrades, most likely. Most Sith would have watched the girl day, gleefully even. But Nicolae wasn't most Sith. Every Force user had potential, with the proper education and training; and the Force had just given him an opportunity to prove his point. There had been a reason for his coming here, after all.

The Sith sorcerer summoned every ounce of his power. Shadows rose around him like steam rising from the surface of a boiling bath. He shaped them into a third blade of darkness, this one longer and wider than those that had come before it. With a slash of his hand, he let the blade loose, and watched it arc up into the sky, cleaving through four of the beasts at once.

"Girl," he bellowed, hoping his voice would carry the distance. "Come with me now if you want to live."

The remaining abominations were confused by what had just happened, but their confusion would be short lived. She needed to make it to him, to the lift, before they realized their numbers and swarmed he and her both. @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

Lyra’s blade sang through the air. She slashed through another abomination swooping down to claw at her back, severing its legs in a spatter of black blood, and the creature plunged and impaled itself on a patch of jutting rock. She didn’t know where this power, this energy, was coming from—but it had to be the Force. Light or dark, however, she couldn’t say for sure.

Suddenly, a shadowed scythe cut across the sky and bisected four of the abominations all at once. Lyra whirled on the source of the attack, clammy hair smacking her in the cheek. She should have tied a braid.

A man was standing by an opening in the mountainside. Dark hair slicked back, draped in a fine waistcoat that could’ve been threaded out of the night itself. Mysterious, and someone she absolutely did not trust.

Another creature shrieked, nearly leveling her shoulders.

The mysterious man it would be.

Lyra deactivated her lightsaber and made a beeline straight for him. When she was close enough, she about dove into the lift, ignoring the possibility of crashing directly into his side. The Jedi didn’t bother shouting into his ear to close the hatch—she turned and slammed on the button herself. The door shut just before one of the remaining creatures could tear through to join them.

She panted, more exhausted and confused than she’d ever been. No amount of reading could have possibly prepared her for this.

She didn’t bother looking at the man now dangerously close to her side. Lyra just let out a ragged breath, pushed a wet strand of hair out of her face, and mumbled, “I f-cking hate this planet.”

 

[Nicolae Locke]

"It's only marginally better underground, I'm afraid," Nicolae replied. "This is a Sith facility. But I'm sure you and your friends were aware of that when you came here."

Your dead friends.

He turned and took in the face of the woman he'd saved. Her skin was smooth, without blemish, like the finest porcelain. But what struck him were her eyes. Fierce, determined, the flicker of fear he'd seen earlier dead; and, in its place, he saw something else. Grief? Anger? Perhaps a mixture. Beautiful. Those emotions were malleable. She was malleable, in the hands of the right sculptor. A plan came together at once.

"The room beyond this lift will be full of the Sith who unleashed those creatures upon your friends," he explained. He knew she would know what he was too, but had to hope her desire for revenge was greater than her disdain for the Sith as a whole. "When it opens, finish the job you came here to do."

He thought of the computers that held the data he was after. The plans he had for them before, new plans he could enact with them now.

The door swished open. As expected, some of the cultists inside had taken advantage of the absence of darkness to retake the room. They jerked around, alarmed by the sudden intrusion. Nicolae clapped his hands together and sent darkness spilling out of the lift like a torrential water leak, until it fill the room completely.

"I'll seal the door," he said, and then left her to her revenge. @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

“They were,” Lyra whispered. Master Kell’s and Lila’s death were still fresh. She couldn’t scrub from her mind the sound of the padawan's gurgling throat, or her bloodcurdling screams, as she was torn apart by a descending pack of abominations.

How Lyra had managed to survive, or at the very least not collapse out of shock, was a surprise in itself.

As the elevator passed through the lower floors, she watched the mysterious man carefully. Lyra had never relaxed the hold on her lightsaber, ready to ignite the blade clean through his stomach if she had to, but he’d made no moves to strike. He did nothing that would threaten her survival. If anything, he was the reason she’d escaped in the first place.

This man was helping her. Why?

“Who are you?” she said, just as the doors swept open to reveal a wide control room. Robed men and women were scattered about, armed to the teeth, but Lyra could tell there were hints of a previous battle, with several strangled corpses lying pale on the floor. Questions swirled in her mind. She looked to the strange man for answers, but only ended up confusing herself further as he unspooled thick tendrils of shadow.

“What are you?” Lyra said, though doubted she’d get an answer from him. Whether he was Jedi or Sith or one very convincing stage magician, he was an ally nonetheless.

She activated her lightsaber, casting brilliant blue light on the faces of her enemy, the Sith she'd been tasked to eliminate alongside Lila and Kell. She grit her teeth.

“Who’s first?”

 

[Nicolae Locke]

Nicolae elected not to answer her questions. Not at first. Questions left unanswered bred uncertainty, and uncertainty bred fear. Fear that could be manipulated.

The brilliant blue of the Jedi's lightsaber was the only light in the room as Nicolae's spell crushed the cultists in darkness. In the confusion, it was easy for him to slither away from the girl, slip behind confused cultists, and reach the door panel. He didn't bother putting in any commands. He couldn't see the keys anyways. Instead, he took the panel into his mind's fist and crushed it with the Force.

Now, there was no escape.

Darth Malicia filled the ranks of her cult with non-Force sensitives, fearing that any trained Sith might one day rise to oppose her. These scared children would be no match for the Jedi. Possessed by a need for revenge, the Jedi would slaughter them with ease. They flung themselves at her like rabid animals, raising knives and fists, swinging without rhyme or reason in hopes of purchase. The perfect excuse for the Jedi to use her saber.

Nicolae watched it all, his twisted smile invisible in the dark. "It matters not what I am," he said, his voice liquid silver, sliding through artificial night like a blade. "Search your feelings deep enough and you'll know the answer. The real question is what are you?" @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

None of the cultists seemed very keen to fall into an orderly line. They rushed her all at once, like a swarm of flesh-eating moths, but Lyra was more than ready for them. She slipped into one of the stances from an old Jedi text she’d read back in the temple, left leg pulled back and her lightsaber set on her right.

A shoddy imitation at best, but it would do the job.

The first cultist was a burly man with a hammer rusted in blood, and he swung the blunt edge toward her side as if there was a jutting nail to be fixed. That was when she saw it. A clear opening.

Lyra dodged left and struck quickly, a rapid thrust of her blade into the man’s side. He let out a sharp grunt and was on the ground in the next moment, dead, smoke rising from his wound.

She shuddered. This was not her first kill, but she never found death’s company pleasant.

Two men lunged at her, side by side, almost crazed in their movements. Lyra didn’t blink. She slashed her lightsaber across and they followed after the last man, a grotesque heap on the floor. Another cultist, a woman, was smart enough to keep her distance. She threw a series of knives at Lyra, with one grazing the skin of her cheek. As for the rest, she’d simply returned the favor with a push of the Force.

She could barely focus on the stranger’s voice in the background, hiding in the dark, but she clung to his words. Was he taunting her, or was this some kind of test? A game? Lyra’s jaw clenched.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said, “but I’m a Jedi.”

 

[Nicolae Locke]

"Are you?"

The curtain of shadows around them lifted, and there was light once more. Nicolae stood on the fringes of the room, pacing around the dead like a lion observing a kill. One of the cultists was still alive. Just barely, but enough to groan and drag himself across the floor. Nicolae strode towards him lazily, summoning the Force until it was a vice around the man's neck. A twist of his wrist put the cultist out of his misery.

Then, his gaze was on the girl, the faintest hint of a grin tugging up the corner of his mouth. "You're sloppy. Your form is rigid. Practiced, but without the freedom or creativity that comes with experience. And you fear the power within you."

He eyed the fallen man with the hammer, remembering the tremor he'd felt from her when she killed him. That fear was so like a Jedi. Maybe she was being truthful after all. But he refused to see it that way. The girl had a spit of fire in her. When she was pushed into a corner, her fear transformed into anger. Just enough to carry her over the finish line, to do what she needed to do. And that made her... fascinating.

Nicolae stepped over another corpse, crossed the dozen or so paces between them, until he was close enough to look down on her, past his crooked nose. "You asked me what I want from you? I want you to live. Every drop of Force-sensitive blood spilt is a waste. But if you continue to cling to the mistaken ideals of your teachers, of your wayward order, one of these missions will be your last."

Just like your friends. He didn't say it, but she would hear the implication in his voice.

"What I want is irrelevant," he continued. "What happens next depends on what you want. So? What is it that you want?" @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

Lyra watched him skeptically.

The man’s words stung, but he wasn’t wrong. As much as she claimed to be a Jedi, she hardly fought like one. Despite spending years on Ajan Kloss, she’d stayed confined to the archives, paging through history books and Republic treatises instead of learning how to properly wield a lightsaber. She was still the girl plucked from the Coruscant gutter. A far cry from the powerful Jedi Oren Zapan had seen inside her.

A shiver ran through her, and the next thing she knew, the man was a stone’s throw away, looming. Height and looks aside, Lyra wouldn’t be intimidated. She puffed out her chest, sizing him up, her lightsaber distorting the shadows at his back.

The more he spoke, the faster her suspicions rose. A wayward order? She almost cursed under her breath. It should have been obvious from the start, from the moment she glimpsed his black robes and the disgustingly perfect teeth in his smile. The man she was dealing with might not be aligned with the cultists, but he was no ally, and certainly no Jedi.

“What I want is for you to keep your distance,” she said, taking a wary step back and raising her lightsaber in a warning. “I know what you are now. You’re a Sith.”

Lyra slid back again, nearly tripping over one of the corpses scattered about the room. “Don’t come any closer.”

 

[Nicolae Locke]

It had taken her longer than he had expected to uncover his identity, but he was unperturbed by her discovery. Eventually, she would have had to find out.

He took a single step closer to her, in spite of her raised lightsaber. Then another. And then another, allowing his confidence to carry him forward. Confidence that her fear of him—of not knowing what he could do—would stay her blade. When he was within striking distance, he raised a hand.

Darkness inched up the walls around her, but it was around her lightsaber wrist that he focused the Force like shackles. "Do you think that toy protects you? Is that what your teachers on Ajan Kloss told you?" he asked. "Go on, then. Show me what it means to be a Jedi."

By the time the last words touched his lips, the light in the room was almost gone. Only the beam from the girl's saber held back the darkness. It smothered her from all sides like an assassin's pillow, but he stood in it as if he were part of it. And, in a way, he was. In the light of her weapon, he met her gaze, daring her to break his grip and attack. His own weapon was but a mental shout away if he needed it. But would he? That remained to be seen.

"What are you waiting for? Go on," he chided her. "Show me the gaps in your training. Show me all the things I could teach you that they could not. Or will you just sit there in the dark?" Here, he let his lip curl into a snarl. "The cowards who let her friends die." @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

Lyra’s breath caught. Undulating darkness spread from the man’s feet. It was like his shadow had a mind and body of its own, bathing the room in its muddy embrace. She was nearly blind, and her surroundings had dissolved into a chasm of black. Everything had. And since he’d practically forced her against the wall, she had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to look but at the man’s cold features in the dim light.

She almost gasped as trails of shadow crossed her dominant hand. Did he mean to smother her to death? Would he force her to use the blade on herself? Her heart careened from one beat to the next, threatening to burst, and despite all her blustering, she struggled to hide her own fear.

“I told you to stay back,” Lyra said, but the words came out as little more than a whisper. “I’m warning you.”

But her threats clearly had no effect on him. She was hopelessly outmatched. This man was an experienced Sith, and Lyra was a Padawan, only ankles-deep in her training and prone to doubt and anger. “I’m not a coward,” she insisted, but again the words sounded false in her mouth. Weak.

Lyra sucked in a breath. She thought of Liu Zheng, the frail woman who’d raised her, and of Oren Zapan, the former Jedi Master she believed could do no wrong. She thought of her parents, whoever and wherever they were. She thought of living.

She lifted her chin and stared him in the eye. “I’m not a coward.”

Lyra raised her other hand and light exploded forth. Nothing potent, and certainly not enough to hurt anyone, but in that instant, she dispelled the shadows, blinding him. Then without thinking, she ran for the lift. And like a madwoman, she pressed the button back to the surface, desperate to seal the doors as she had with the abominations. Desperate to escape.

 

[Nicolae Locke]

And, just like that, he'd won.

Her fear had overtaken her. She was putty, and all that was left to do was to mold her to his liking. And he did want to mold her. At first, it had just been a game, born from his desire to see Force users survive and a genuine boredom with Darth Malicia's servants. But her light had changed that. She was his opposite in every way, and he wasn't about to let her slip away from him. Not until he had bled her sunlight black as night.

As she made for the lift, he raised a hand and clamped the doors shut with the Force. The girl had found her braveness in her desperation. After he was through training her, she would be able to summon it at will. She would be a force of nature, above her base Jedi instincts. The only thing that was left to do was close the trap around her ankles.

Nicolae deliberately softened his voice. "No. You are not a coward," he said, stepping more carefully towards the trapped girl. "Your friends were simply weak. Unprepared for the harshness of the mission. But not you. You survived. Not because of your training, but in spite of it." Cautiously, he extended a hand to her. "The Jedi have never understood you, have they? But I do—I can. Our powers are opposite one another. Light and darkness, called by its will. A dyad in the Force. And I have the experience. I could teach you things they never could. You need only make the choice."

Nicolae hated that he felt almost hopeful. Ever since her light burst into the room, shredding his shadows, permitting her escape, the power within him had sung. He could feel the strings of Force energy attaching them. Weak, at the moment, but he could make it stronger. He knew he could. And if she wouldn't say yes, he would have to find another way. @Feng Mian

 

[Lyra]

Fear jumped into her throat as the elevator doors slammed shut. Lyra had been sealed in the control room, trapped by the Sith, and with nowhere to run, she spun on her heels and raised her lightsaber in defense. If a cheap trick wasn’t enough to cover an escape, then she’d fight her way out tooth and nail. Death might be waiting for her in the dark, but at least she’d die a Jedi.

But why? What had the Jedi Order ever done for her?

The realization came to her, unbidden. Oren Zapan had delivered Lyra out of the city streets of Coruscant, he’d given her a home in the temple archives at Ajan Kloss—but what more? She’d received little training. Earned no friends. Like the rest of the library texts, she had become something of a souvenir, a shelved book collecting dust, a tome of wasted potential.

Lyra absorbed the man’s words like a dry sponge. She hated the sincerity in them. She hated to admit the effect they had on her own thoughts. She hated the distant pull she felt toward him. What might happen if she let him teach her? What if, finally, she could unlock the mysterious power hidden inside of her?

What about the truth of her parents?

She kept her lightsaber aimed toward him, challenging him to take another step. “The Jedi Order might not understand me, but at least they know what’s right. I’ve read about the Sith. I’ve heard the stories. Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine. All you want is control and power and blood.”

“And believe me when I say this, but I’m not someone that can be so easily controlled.” Lyra readied to strike him with her lightsaber, but a loud clang reverberated behind the lift doors. There was a sound of peeling metal, then a snarl.

Shit.