خاتمه

Epilogue

The Enemy

“This is a beautiful place,” Elzar Mann said.

Avar Kriss was at his side; they had left Stellan Gios behind at the dedication, deep in conversation with several Council members. Elzar and Avar walked along a path through one of the garden modules on the Starlight Beacon: a huge transparisteel bubble, through which a long spiraling walkway had been built. The base of the sphere was filled with the native soil of a world called Qualai, a small, lowgravity planet on the edge of the Outer Rim.

From that soil grew trees, tall and thin and elegant, reaching all the way from the module’s base to its top, some three hundred meters above. Descending from the bright-blue branches of those trees, a drapery of vines, rippling ribbons stretching from crown to ground.

These were varied shades of red and orange, graceful gradients running their lengths. Air currents stirred the vines, so they washed gently back and forth, their fragrance like incense.

The spiral path let one walk through these vines as they swirled and parted, tiny insects and birds bright with bioluminescence flitting between like sparks, each tree its own ecosystem.

At the center of the garden, with space looming beyond the transparisteel, the effect was something like standing inside a campfire, looking out at the night.

“Yes, it is,” Avar said.

“And all ours,” Elzar said. “No one else seems to have found it yet.” “It won’t last,” Avar said. “I’m sure people will leave the party and find their way here soon enough. Couples looking for quiet spots to be alone, probably.”

“Then let’s enjoy it while we’ve got it, eh?”

They kept ascending, the sound of the flame-ribbons washing through the chamber.

“Look at us, huh? Just a couple of Jedi Masters, taking a quiet moment together. Can you believe it? Sometimes I never thought it would happen.”

Avar smiled at him.

“I knew the Council would promote you eventually,” she said.

“Was never a question.”

“Easy for you to say. You made Master a few years ago.”

“Hey, the Council knows talent when they see it. When will it happen?”

“Soon, probably. I’ll need to stand before the Council, back on Coruscant. It feels like a formality, really. I can’t imagine my life will change as much as it did at the last elevation.”

“True. The jump from Padawan to Jedi Knight…that’s where it all really sinks in. The choice of it…” Her voice trailed off.

Elzar suspected they were both thinking about the same thing.

Shared moments as Padawans, tolerated and understood and even common—but things to be left behind once one ascended to become an adult in the Order.

They hadn’t discussed those moments, not in a very long time, and never with more than an oblique reference, but they were never very far away from the other’s mind, especially when they were together.

Those times, many years in the past, seemed very present just then.

Avar stopped. It took Elzar a step to realize she wasn’t keeping pace, and he turned to look back at her.

He raised an eyebrow.

She held out her hand.

He took it. Held it up, looked at it, then looked at Avar Kriss, his friend.

The look she gave him was like that sea he found inside himself, the Force, deep and endless and impossible to fully comprehend.

You could drown in it.

“We are Jedi,” he said.

“We are,” she replied.

She looked away, and let go of his hand, and he was no longer drowning, but perhaps some part of him wished he was.

They kept walking.

“They gave me the station,” Avar said.

“What?”

“I have command of the Jedi contingent on the Starlight Beacon.

With Master Jora gone, they asked me to take over. I guess I impressed the Council after what happened in Hetzal, and everything after, and…”

“Yes. You are very impressive,” Elzar said, his voice soft.

A little higher on the path, walking through the flames.

“I have work on Coruscant,” Elzar said. “Research in the

Archives…what we achieved in Hetzal has given me all sorts of ideas about new ways the light side might speak to us. I know the Council doesn’t always understand the things I try to do, but I’m a Master now. I feel like this is my chance to really demonstrate how useful I can be to the Order.”

“Yes,” Avar said, her voice quiet as well.

“We won’t be seeing each other as often,” Elzar said. “Do you think we got too used to spending time together? Was that a mistake?” “No,” she said, her voice certain.

“I agree. And we’ll stay in touch.”

“Yes. We can speak whenever we want. Chancellor Soh’s comm relay project will make that easier than ever.”

“Of course,” he said.

They had reached the top of the path, the end of the spiral, where an exit led back to the rest of the station. The sounds of celebration could be heard—dim and inviting.

“Sounds like it’s ramping up. You want to put away a few glasses of whatever they’ve got? I wouldn’t mind dancing, either. Should we go dance, Jedi Master Elzar Mann?”

He wondered what she thought of the look he was giving her just then. If she might be drowning a bit, too.

“I’ll be along in a bit,” he said. “It’s nice here, and I don’t know when I’ll get to see this spot again.”

“All right,” she replied.

Avar hesitated, then smiled, full and open and honest, and walked away.

Elzar watched her go, then turned and looked out at the stars, at the emptiness of space, the deepest sea of all. Below him, the flametrees churned, rustling and whipping—it was like standing atop an inferno. He let his consciousness roam out into the darkness beyond, looking, looking…

The Force seized his mind.

Awful visions flashed before his eyes, things he could not understand, cast in a sickly purple light. Jedi, many he knew, friends and colleagues, horribly mutilated, fighting battles they could not win against awful things that lived in the dark. Things that lived in the deep.

The Jedi, those who survived, were fleeing. Not retreating, but fleeing.

The visions spiked into his mind, the Force screaming some sort of warning or prophecy at him, shearing through his consciousness, and they would not stop.

Elzar fell to his knees, blood dripping from his nose. This did not feel like an unknowable, avoidable vision of the future.

This felt inevitable. Certain.

Evil, horror, sweeping across the galaxy like the tide.

He saw Jedi dying, screaming, and himself last of all, unable to escape what was coming.

Slowly, agonizingly, the vision receded. Elzar returned to himself.

He gasped, and more blood spattered the deck.

What had he just seen? What had he seen?

The worst was not the chaos; the battles; the pain; the unknown, monstrous horrors surging out of the dark. It was what he had seen on the face of every single Jedi the Force had shown him.

The greatest enemy of all.

Fear.