The nondescript stranger who's carefully followed them through the last three stores quietly examines the selection of electronics on the far side of the shop. Surely she's not close enough to overhear them.

"It's not good for you."

"Say your baby-napping Jedi."

"Ekkreth..."

"I'm not wrong."

"It's a necessary evil. What the Sith do is far worse."

"Well, I'm not claiming that anything Svahe taught me is philosophically valid."

Very engaging electronics. Such battery. Many wire. (She can't help grinning. She likes this other Sith.)

"The Jedi are keepers of order for the Republic," Karzel says.

"See, that's the thing. Order. Chaos. Not good and evil. They're not the same thing."

"Order isn't tautologically good, but it's better for people. People need stability, the ability to predict what's going to happen next."

"The fact that people need a minimum of order in their lives doesn't prove anything. People need an element of chaos in their lives, too, of freedom. Or they're nothing but slaves. Don't Jedi call their teachers Master, too, just like the Sith?"

Karzel sighs.

She puts her generic shopper mannerisms on and drifts closer, careful not to draw attention to herself yet.

"You can't deny that the Republic has higher standards of living than the Sith Empire. The Sith are evil, Ekkreth, you know that better than anyone."

"That's the thing about chaos, though. You can say 'the Jedi this' and 'the Jedi that' because they're orderly; even if they're not all the same they're responsible for their organization and their organization is responsible for them. Sith are much more independent."

Karzel reaches out and grabs her wrist, but not in a restraining way. "Ekkreth. No matter what else, when you use the Dark Side you become more angry. When you're angry you're not happy. You deserve to be happy, after everything that's happened to you."

She steps closer for a moment. Her eyes meet his with a vulnerable intensity.

--And then she steps away and shakes his hand off. "What I deserve has never mattered before. And happiness isn't my highest priority."

She is a sucker for a dramatic opening. Her mannerisms don't change, but she loosens her hold on her Force aura, letting it become obvious that there's more than one Sith in the room: "Plus, that's kind of bullshit. You can have both. It just takes some work."

Karzel's perception may not have been good enough to sense her before she let him, but his reflexes are good. He whirls into a stance, his hand drops to his lightsaber--

And Ekkreth steps in front of him, holding up one hand to indicate that he shouldn't attack, at least not yet. "Hello."

She inclines her head in greeting, almost too casually; she hasn't gone for her saber but her stance says she can, as soon as it seems prudent. "Hello. I assume you want to keep him?"

"Yes. He's very silly but also very useful.

And good in bed."

Karzel splutters faintly, at least as much in amusement as indignation.

She chuckles. "Well, there are worse decisions you could make. Anyway, I hear you're having a master problem?"

"You could say that."

She nods. "I had one of those, once. Might be able to help with yours, depending."

"I got away. Karzel thinks I should just stay away but he killed my parents so I'm going to go back and kill him."

Nod. "Reasonable."

"What's your name?"

"Lord Pradnakt." If she's familiar with the Sith language, she'll know that it translates as 'dusk'.

"Hm."

"Hm?"

"Darth Svahe didn't mention you."

"Yeah, I like my privacy. Not that engineers are as well known as commanders, regardless."

"Mm, I suppose. Lord Svahe's training was light on Sith culture and heavy on interesting ways to maim people with the Force."

"Ah. Well, you might know some of my work, then. Are they still using the double-flanged modulation circuit design for 'sabers these days?"

"...Yeah. That was you?"

"Builds on my work; I was off working on fancy blade features while Lotszais was coming up with it. Clever, though, I'm not surprised nobody's improved on it yet."

"Neat."

"Mmhmm."

"So what's the holdup with your master problem? I assume it isn't just the Jedi."

"...I'm having trouble finding him. And he has defenses."

"Sounds like something I might be able to help with, if you'd like."

"That would be excellent."

Nod. "Do you have transportation? The nearest town to me is about a day and a half by speeder from here, you can set up shop there if you stay stealthed and don't mess with them."

Nod. "We do. Stealthed like they don't know we're there or stealthed like they don't know we're Force users?"

"Second thing. Doesn't have to be more than a few days, I can set up a guest room if it turns out you're going to be here a while. Makes more sense than going back and forth, it's a bit of a hike."

"We can do that."

Nod. "And you'll have to be polite to my droid. I expect she'll stay out of your way, though, she's nervous of strange Force users."

Puzzled blink.

"Of course."

The Jedi gets a brief amused grin, and then she continues. "Sounds like a plan, then. I have a couple more days of errands before I head back; where should I find you when I'm ready to go?"

She names a hotel.

And two days later, shortly after noon, they can sense her presence down in the lobby.

Karzel stiffens.

"Don't worry," she murmurs, and squeezes his shoulder.

The two of them pick up their meager belongings and come down to the lobby.

The aura retreats as soon as they start moving. When they get to the lobby, she's sitting on the couch with a datapad; she doesn't look up until they get close. "Ready to go?"

"Mhm."

"Good." And off they can go.

Her speeder is an older model, and middle-of-the-line even when it was new, but well taken care of. It seats two, or maybe three if the built-in storage area was empty; right now, though, it's full of miscellaneous packages, neatly arranged and held down with a net.

The two of them have a newer speeder built for two in back of the hotel.

And soon enough they're out of the city and into the desert.

There's a lot of desert.

She keeps an eye on them, metaphorically speaking, stopping for breaks when they need them without being asked.

Shortly before sunset, she pauses at the top of a ridge that'll offer a particularly nice view of it.

"Beautiful."

"Mmhmm. Not as nice as home, but that's a high bar to clear."

"Oh?"

"You'll see."

"I look forward to it."

And she goes back to preparing dinner: lentil-potato stew.

"Smells nice."

"Thanks. Daisy usually cooks, at home, but it's always a good idea to know how to take care of yourself."

"Yeah, definitely.

I'd offer to make tea but I don't have all the spices I'd need."

"I've got some packed, but it sounds like we take different kinds. I can pull it out if you'd like some, though."

She shakes her head. "No thank you. My kind is very different."

She nods.

The soup is done in time for them to sit and watch the sunset while they eat it.

"Tastes as good as it smells."

"Glad you like it."

She nods.

"You're big on pretty things?"

"Mmhmm. It's pretty much what I do, these days, is make art."

"...What, really?"

Amusement, again. "Sure. It's what I want."

"Hm."

Heh.

Stew.

Stew!

And then sleep, probably.

Yep. There are some good caves for it at the base of the ridge; Pradnakt offers to levitate their bedding down.

"Thanks."

She gets hers set up, too, but hangs out watching the sky for a while rather than going straight to bed.

Karzel doesn't--quite--sleep either. He's very good at faking it, but--friendly-seeming isn't actually a guarantee of friendly.

Well, that's less of a problem than it could be, but it does mean she's not getting any sleep either. That's fine. She can hang out and watch the stars.

It will be such a sleepless night for both of them.

In the morning he will be an amount of functional-post-all-nighter that is probably remarkable if one is not Lord Pradnakt.

That is pretty remarkable. She doesn't comment on it, though, just starts on breakfast. (Hash browns with cheese, and some muffins from a bakery in the city.)

"You're a good cook."

"Hash browns're easy. Remind me and I'll show you sometime."

Nod. "Is there a good market where we're going?"

"Not really. We can get most anything ordered in, but it takes a while sometimes. We grow most of our own food."

"Okay," she says, disappointed.

"She takes her tea spices seriously."

"Damn straight I do."

"Ah. Well, if they didn't have them at Kincardine there probably aren't any on the planet, and that's easily three to six months for an order to come in."

"I'm only missing a few but they're an important few. ...It was my mother's recipe."

"Yeah. I'll have Daisy put the order in right away," she shrugs, "best I can do."

"Thank you."

"No problem."

"Do you think we're going to be here in six months?"

"Hopefully not. Worth putting the order in anyway, though, it might be quick."

Nod nod.

Food.

And Jedi-observing.

The Jedi observes her back! Although he seems to be more concerned with where she is in relation to Ekkreth than in relation to him.

Cute.

Kinda pointless, but cute.

Well, the questions "can he beat her in a fight" and "can he hold her off long enough for Ekkreth to escape" are completely different things. But perhaps.

He isn't overtly hostile about it.

Good, that would be hazardous to his health.

"Is there anything else you'll want while you're out here?"

"Depends how long. I'm low on a couple spices I'm not out of; I wouldn't normally bother refilling them at this point but normally we spend a week at most on any given planet."

Nod. "Daisy generally goes to town monthly, that's about the turnaround time to get things from Kincardine, but we can put in a rush order."

"It's going to be weird, staying in one place where there's so much green."

"You're from a real desert planet, then? Mine was more plains, under all the farms."

"Mhm. Tatooine. And then I've been living one form or another of nomadic lifestyle since."

Nod. "I've been here eight, almost nine years. It's nice to have someplace to call home."

"Yeah."

"You'll get there."

"We'll see."

Shrug. "You're a Sith. If you want it - if you want it more than what it costs to get it - you'll get there."

"I might want other things more. I can figure it out when Svahe's dead."

Nod. "Fair enough."

"Slavery, for example. It's a problem."

- huh.

"Yeah."

"My mother was an escaped slave."

"Ah."

She would kind of like to give Ekkreth a hug. Instead - "I've wanted to do something about that. But I haven't managed to come up with a plan good enough to probably get myself killed implementing."

"Probably get yourself killed?"

"Stopping all the slavery, everywhere? Yeah, that pisses a bunch of people off. Even with time to prepare and my choice of venue I doubt I could take a Dark Councilor."

"I don't think I was thinking that big. Maybe I should have been.".

"Yeah. In my case it's more - I could take on smaller parts of it, sure. But that's a die roll each time, and once I started, I'd have a hard time stopping. That die'll come up one eventually, so if I'm going to spend my life on it, there's no reason not to go big. But ultimately, that's not what I want to do with it. Yet, maybe."

"I already have connections with the helping-slaves-escape network on Tatooine, is maybe a relevant factor."

Nod. "And it's the sort of case where it's easier to stop after just one."

"Yeah. We'll see."

"Mmhmm. Priorities."

"You get good at those, in the desert."

Nod.

Breakfast.

Yep. Tasty breakfast.

Which the Jedi is polite enough not to overtly check for poison!

Good of him. (It's not poisoned.)

She's quiet without being distant, for the rest of the meal, and then they can get going again.

Good.

Ekkreth seems a little bit more at ease when they're on the move.

Reasonable.

Pradnakt keeps the lunch stop short, and calls another halt just as it's starting to feel like time for the evening meal. "My place is up that way," she says, gesturing to the thin trail making a fork in the road heading back the way they came. "Refor is a couple hours further on; the road runs right through it. There isn't a hotel, but they should be able to tell you who has rooms for rent if you stop by the town hall or the library."

"Refor is the name of the town?"

"Mmhmm."

"Okay then."

"Daisy'll be out there tomorrow or the next day; she'll let you know when we'll be ready to have you come out. It'll be least disruptive if she can find you in the library."

"That won't be a problem," she says, shooting the Jedi a fond look.

"All right. Oh, and don't mention me, that'll clue them in that something's up."

"I kind of assumed that went in hand with not being noticed as Force sensitives, yeah."

Nod. "Exactly. Okay, then, I'll see you in a few days."

"See you."

And off she goes up the trail.

And the Jedi and the Sith go off towards the town.

It's a small town, though maybe a bit bigger than what's common on Tatooine. Most of the shops, plus the library and the town hall, are clustered on the main street, with houses and farmland surrounding it. The library is rather impressive for a town this size, but closed, as is the town hall, but the general store seems to be open.

Karzel asks about room for rent.

The bored teenager minding the shop directs him to one of the nearby houses; knocking on its door produces a middle-aged woman with a noticeable limp. "Hello?"

"Hello! We're in town for a few days and were directed to you?"

"Oh, yes of course. One room or two?"

She quotes them a reasonable price for the room, and offers to make them breakfast and dinner as well for a small fee.

One room, and he pays the fee.

And she produces a room key and a house key for them and calls a droid downstairs to help them with their luggage. "Have you eaten tonight?"

"Not yet."

Nod. "I can make you some sandwiches, then, or I can heat up some leftovers if you'd rather; I think the shepherd's pie will stretch to two, or I have chicken and biscuits with gravy."

"Whatever's most convenient."

"Sandwiches it is. You can head up, if you'd like to get settled in, I'll have RB bring them up."

"Thank you."

The room is fairly small, but nicely decorated; the bed is a good size for the two of them, and the desk is arranged so they can both use it as a dining table, if one of them sits on the end of the bed to do it.

The droid follows silently with their luggage, deposits it neatly by the foot of the bed, and returns downstairs without comment.

Ekkreth glances after the droid but doesn't comment.

He comes back a little while later with the promised sandwiches. "Can I do anything else for you, sir, ma'am?"

"No, we're good."

He nods, almost more of a very shallow bow, and leaves them alone.

Ekkreth half-collapses onto the bed and sighs.

Karzel slides onto it from the other side and lays down and hugs her.

She lets him.

"Are you alright?" he asks after a little while.

"Mm."

He continues hugging her.

Eventually he gets up and brings the sandwiches.

She eats.

He does too.

A few days later they can be found at the library.

It's clear from the first glance where Daisy gets her name; most of her torso and upper arms are decorated with flowers made of enameled metal in a variety of pleasingly-arranged colors. She doesn't approach them immediately, first dropping off a stack of books and datacards with the librarian and receiving a different stack in return.

"Ekkreth and Karzel?"

"Yes--oh, you're lovely."

"Thank you," she grins. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes."

"All right."

She's got the same speeder Dusk used, parked in the lot a few spots down from the library; she shows them where it is and says she'll wait there for them.

They arrive after less than an hour.

And off they can go. It's two hours to the fork, and ten minutes later they pass swirls of metal incorporated into an apparently natural rockfall, similar in style to Daisy's flowers.

"Lovely."

Daisy isn't close enough to hear or comment.

They pass a dozen or so more pieces of art, various abstract combinations of metal and stone, on the remaining two hours of the trip.

Pradnakt may be a Sith but she's got good taste.

Mhm.

And eventually they come to her home. Perhaps they were expecting something like a fortress, or a palace, but instead it's a group of modest adobe buildings - garage, main house, and newly built guest house, with the glimpse of a garden and a smaller structure, perhaps a barn, behind them. The dusty courtyard they all face features a tall metal statue, a fire circle, and a tree-shaded well against the front of the Sith's house.

She comes out to greet them as the speeders stop. "Hello again. Was the ride in okay?"

"It was fine."

Nod. "You can go ahead and get settled in, and give me a more detailed description of what we're dealing with over dinner, all right?"

(Daisy is putting their speeder away already; there isn't room in the garage for two, but there's a shaded bay next to the guest house.)

"That sounds fine. Thank you."

"'Welcome. Come by if you need anything, too." And she heads back inside.

They unpack insofar as they can. 

Karzel is vaguely unsettled.

"You alright?"

"Nothing's--wrong, but--"

Nod. 

They're left alone all afternoon; an hour or so before sunset, Dusk knocks on their door.

Ekkreth opens the door. "Hello."

"Hi. Diner's ready; I can bring it over, but the workroom will probably be more comfortable."

She glances back inside. "We'll come over."

She nods and leads the way.

The workroom is obviously well-used; it's been tidied up, but there are still bins of parts along the wall, and the table has the stains and scars of a work surface under the place settings and dishes of food. Practicality doesn't preclude decoration, though; the wooden cabinet standing against the back wall is decorated with a swirl of metal insets, and a rainbow of jewel-toned cloths hang draped from the walls wherever there's space.

Daisy is already sitting at the table; Dusk takes a seat next to her, leaving the two settings on the perpendicular side of the table for her guests.

"...I have to admit, you're not what I expected."

"I can imagine. We," she inclines her head at Ekkrith, including her in the category, "aren't so common, especially where a Jedi would ever encounter us."

"Can you clarify what you mean by we?"

"Sane Sith. Ones who don't just assume power is worth it at any cost, who think about what we're doing with our lives." She shrugs. "I'm pretty sure he doesn't have anything of value for you, but that you're asking the question at all shows me you are one."

"How do you--"

"Hmm?"

"Stay sane?"

"Ah."

"We pay attention, to what we want and how we're going about getting it - whether what we're doing really is that, or we're getting distracted. And why we want it, too - not that there are wrong reasons, the way you think there are, but there are better and worse ones for a particular person, and courses of action that don't make sense for a given reason. We can still get lost, keeping hold of that - Force knows I did - but we can find our way back, too."

"...You did?"

"Yeah. Force burnout, not -" handwave. "I'm better, now; coming up on two years since the last time I slipped."

"Good."

"Yeah. That one's what I killed my master over; he wanted me tractable. So you can see where I'm sympathetic to your situation."

Nod.

"We'll get him. Plenty of assholes out there, but that's no reason not to do something about this one."

"Yeah."

"So, what are we up against?"

"Darth Svahe is--well, a Darth. He operates within the Sphere of Mysteries. He mostly works with Force Sensitivity--he's done a lot of experiments on the possibility of inducing it, and he found a way to temporarily shut it down. He has three other apprentices, two of whom have apprentices of their own."

"Ah-huh."

"He doesn't stay in one place for very long very often, and wherever he's staying will tend to be rigged with booby-traps."

"It sounds like he's moving a lot of people around, do you know how he handles the logistics of that?"

Headshake. "There was a lot of stuff he didn't tell me. I only know about the turning-off-Force-sensitivity thing because he used me as a test subject."

That gets a shudder. "Okay. So we'll definitely want an information-gathering phase - fortunately I'm a sensory specialist, if we can get me within a couple dozen miles I should be able to get a pretty good picture of what's going on."

Nod. "That's good."

"Yeah. Anything else that might be useful?"

"His other apprentices are Lord Enris, Lord Azahd, and Lord Janus. Lord Enris and Lord Azahd are the ones with their own apprentices, although I don't know their names. Lord Azahd is the one who does traps."

Nod. "Do you know how much of that is custom each time, versus pre-designed?"

"I know that they're usually similar but adjusted for the environment; I don't know how much of that is which."

"That should be enough. I read minds; I wouldn't expect to be able to go past the surface without being noticed, but if I listen to him design them, that works."

"You read minds?"

"Yeah - only a vague sense of emotions, by default, about as much as I get from body language, but something like this justifies more than that. Targeted, of course; I might need to read some of the victims to figure out what's going on with them, but I shouldn't need to do much of that."

"I'm really glad Darth Svahe doesn't know how to do that."

"Yeah."

"I wouldn't expect most Sith to tolerate learning it - you might, though."

"Tolerate?"

"Yeah. You - really get a view of people as people, that way. If someone's operating on the assumption that they don't matter, I'd expect it to throw them."

Snort.

Slightly amused: "yeah."

"I don't generally think of that as a Sith thing specifically. --Before you I hadn't met any other Sith who weren't--also part of Svahe's group."

"Oh, it's absolutely not. It just won't come up with forceblind people, and I don't know enough about Jedi to say."

"They have mind tricks but I don't know if that runs up against the thing." She looks at Karzel.

He shakes his head.

"Yeah, that's not entirely unrelated, but it's a very different technique."

"So how does mindreading work, then?"

"Sure you want him picking it up?"

"...Point."

Nod. "Later. Is there anything else you want to pick up, while we're at it? It sounds like you might be missing some of the basics, too."

"I--wouldn't know. I would appreciate being filled in."

She nods. "Daisy, could you get my apprentice notes?"

"Sure." The droid heads for the back room.

"Thanks."

"She's pretty."

"Thank you. Of all my work that might be the piece I'm proudest of."

"Why?"

Shrug, "personal reasons. I did most of it in a pretty complicated time of my life; I wasn't sure that wouldn't interfere with it turning out how I wanted it to."

"That makes sense. ...I only wondered because your sculptures are so lovely."

"Ah. Well, thank you."

At that, Daisy returns with a box, the long sort used to keep a collection of datacards in order, and hands it to Pradnakt, who passes it to Ekkreth. "Thank you, Daisy. Ekkreth, I have a spare reader if you don't have one with you."

"Thank you. I do have one."

Nod. "Feel free to come to me with anything you don't understand; I wasn't really writing them for anyone's use but my own."

"I will."

She nods. "And, while I have you here - I generally meditate for about forty minutes after sunset, and then practice my saber forms; it's not particularly safe to approach me, when I'm doing that. I'll stay back from the houses; you can ask Daisy about anything you need then."

"Good to know."

"Yeah. Otherwise feel free to make use of the place; I don't really recommend going out in the heat, but if you get stuck or lost anywhere in my range, I'll notice and come for you."

"The heat?"

"Ah, it probably doesn't bear mentioning, to you. But if he's not from a desert planet, he might not handle it so well - bring more water than you think you'll need."

"That makes sense."

"Mmhmm. That should be about it - I can take you on a tour of the art paths, sometime, if you want, but they're easy enough to find by yourselves, too."

"Ooh."

"Mmhmm. There are five; I generally start a new one every couple years."

"I'll have to see if I can find them, then."

"I'll be busy studying these," she gestures to the box of notes, "but have fun."

"I will!"

"Enjoy."

"Thank you."

Dinner.

Mm, dinner.

And eventually it's done.

"You might want to stay out to watch the sunset," she tells Karzel.

"Ooh."

"Have you ever seen a sunset in a binary system?

"Mmhmm - I wound up on this cute little island planet in a binary system one time; one of my co-prentices wanted to check out the Force properties of some of the wildlife there and our master brought all of us along on the expedition, maybe four or five months after he'd taken me on. It's still just about the most spectacular thing I've ever seen."

"Yeah."

"Got a pretty nice one here, too, though. In comparison to just plain."

"Good to know."

"And I won't spoil it for you any further. Dessert?" She goes to get it: chopped fruit and whipped cream and biscuits, each in a shared dish; she lets them serve themselves first.

They serve themselves.

"It's strange, sometimes, what things you get used to and what things you don't."

"Mm?"

"Abundant fruit."

"Ah, yeah. It took me a while to get used to how much of a luxury it is here, personally. Not so much I can't have it on a regular basis, but it's not just straightforwardly a staple like it was growing up ."

"Potatoes are weird sometimes too--we didn't have them around much, growing up, but we had a different tuber that's similar enough to make the difference jarring sometimes."

Nod. "I eat a fair number of potatoes, usually, but it'll be easy enough to avoid serving them to you. Didn't have time to expand the garden yet anyway."

"It's not bad, just strange."

Shrug. "All right."

"It is okay to do the comfortable thing. It doesn't actually make you weaker. Can make you stronger, sometimes."

"Mm. Potatoes genuinely aren't uncomfortable, though."

"Mmhmm. But the useful part there is having something you do want, not avoiding something you don't. Having something to protect can be very powerful."

"True. I have no intention of accepting spice substitutes for my tea."

"Yeah, exactly."

"Or telling anyone the recipe."

"No complaints from me."

"Good."

"You know, I should probably teach you telepathy anyway; it's not too much more work to learn to block mindreading, if you've got the framework for it already."

"I would appreciate it."

Nod. "Read up," she nods at the datacard box, "and come up with a priority list for me, seems like the way to do it."

"Sensible."

Nod. "And I do technique design, too - we probably don't want to take the time for anything really unique, but if you notice something where having a variant would give us an edge, let me know and I'll see what I can do."

Nod.

"Okay. I'll leave you to it, then?"

"That sounds good."

"All right."

The droid returns to the back room and Pradnakt starts clearing the table and washing the dishes.

The guests leave. Ekkreth returns to the guest house and starts poring over the notes; Karzel starts exploring the art trails.

The sun begins to set before Karzel gets to any of the art; a blaze of color in the sky, and a scattering of reflected color like stars across the land.

Pradnakt's notes are organized by topic: broad, then narrow, then chronologically within each, making it quite easy to figure out where to start to learn a particular technique, and to see what ability it ultimately gives. Unsurprisingly, the largest portion of the collection is devoted to sensory powers - seeing and hearing at a distance; darkvision and other forms of sensory improvement, with a focus on filtering and clarifying what one senses; sensing presences, emotions, awakeness and attentional focus, and surface thoughts within an area; how to form a connection with a specific person to allow yourself to sense those things, plus deeper thoughts and memories, from them in particular; danger sense and other precognition; and how to observe the Force itself, to detect when others are using powers and learn them for oneself. There are also sections on bodily control - how to avoid being drugged or poisoned and how to allow a drug to work in spite of the technique in oneself or others, how to avoid being harmed by heat, cold, radiation, and other environmental effects, how to counter pain, nausea, and other physical conditions, and so on - telekinesis and its uses, mind tricks and related mental effects, force lightning and the effects that can be transmitted through it plus a section on making colored lightning, and so on. There's also a section on lightsaber combat, though the notes in that section are very sparse; it's mostly composed of pictures and indecipherable arrow charts with the occasional word like 'quickly' or 'crowds'. And one on meditation, covering a wide enough variety of techniques to definitely give the impression that Pradnakt did her own research into the topic: increasing the intensity of one's emotions is well covered, of course, but there are also a variety of techniques for inducing them, maintaining them, balancing them to optimize the power of different techniques, and even reducing them without sacrificing the ability to reassert them later. And at the very beginning, there's a section on Sith philosophy, starting with the Sith code and continuing through a collection of other works - poems, essays, snippets of case law, brief history lessons, in no particular order and with notes ranging from multiple fully edited essays to single, sometimes apparently unrelated words.

Hm.

She knows some of this already, of course, Darth Svahe was a horrible Master but he did want to forge her into a surpassing weapon.

A lot of it is new, though. She makes notes of what is where, particularly the more interesting or useful-seeming ones.

Ooh.

Karzel appreciates the sunset-struck art very much, although he also keeps half a force-sense-equivalent-of-an-eye out in case of danger.

It's pretty safe; there aren't even any large animals around, though there is the occasional stinging ant or poisonous plant or docile but venomous snake.

About twenty minutes up the path, he comes to the first installation: it's much rougher than any of the art he's seen so far, a study in wire on the subject of lightning, some twelve feet high at the tallest point and easily six or eight wide, big dramatic strikes branching and splitting until they reach needle thinness; an obvious show of power.

It's a very Sith piece of art.

He should probably be disturbed by how compelling it is. Instead he shoves that thought in a drawer and locks it.

The next piece is not much further on; a low, fairly flat cliff face serves as the backdrop for a shattered sheet of iron, arranged as if in the earliest stages of exploding outward, with rust stains streaking the stone behind it.

Interesting.

He sits there looking at it for several minutes before moving on.

The next piece is, frankly, kind of disturbing. A twist of metal, constructed of a variety of parts, that doesn't quite come together into a coherent animal, but coalesces into various threatening animal parts - extended claws, threatening gaping jaws, piercing eyes, muscles coiled for leaping.

Very Sithy, but more in a way that fits his preconceptions than the first one. He doesn't linger at that one very long.

Yeah, reasonable.

The next thing he comes to is a giant metal frame, tall enough that it's hard to judge its height in the darkness - a few stories, at least, rising from a slab of concrete. Examination of the lowest level reveals a collection of metal objects attached to the frame, each balanced so that a slight push on one end will result in a few seconds of clothlike rippling on the other.

Yeah he's gonna poke it.

All the bits on the bottom level do the same thing, except one immobile thing near one end, just above head height.

Closer exploration does turn up a red-painted metal rod, about lightsaber length, and a lightswitch, at the base of the structure opposite that.

...

Yeah, he's going to flip the switch.

A pair of lights come on, a few feet away on the other side of the trail, set carefully to only illuminate the lowest level.

Huh. Not what he was expecting.

Pradnakt is rather full of surprises, yes.

He's starting to get that.

He keeps looking at the sculpture.

There are three more levels to the structure, with more things attached to the frame; it's too dim to see them well, but some appear to be similar to the ones he's already seen - both the fabric-ripple sort and the immobile sort - while some have a protruding rod, instead. There's also a solid, dark lump at the very top of the frame, in the center.

It's not an especially climbable frame, but it'd only take a bit of Force enhancement to jump up to the second level for a closer look.

He can do that.

When he grabs the frame, his hand lands on another lightswitch, this one turning on a small spotlight pointed at him.

Huh.

With the added light, he can see that the protruding rods are painted red - all the same shade, slightly more orange than true red, while the bar at the bottom of the structure was a different, redder shade.

There's an obvious place to leap to, from here, and if he looks very closely, he'll see that the natural place for his hand to fall would place it right under another lightswitch.

Ooh. He will do that, then.

This lightswitch also bathes him in light. The nearest added bit is one of the ones with the rods; there's an insect wing shaped bit of metal on the inside of the frame that could be pushed, by hand, if it was a little closer, or with telekinesis. And again there's an obvious place to leap to, ahead and a bit above, outfitted with another lightswitch, easily spotted now that he knows what to look for.

He nudges the wing.

The bits in between the wing and the rod fold, and the rod swings toward him, mimicking a lightsaber blow.

He ducks.

It doesn't come close enough for that to be necessary, and swings part of the way back up to its starting position before stopping.

He makes the next jump.

He's near the side of the structure, now; the next jump from here isn't as immediately obvious.

He looks around for it.

Directly up, and there's a particularly complicated immobile whatsit to jump through on the way.

Hm.

This jump is challenging, but he makes it.

From there, the path leads back to the other side of the structure, with the required leaps mostly increasing in difficulty as he goes; a few of them are very easy, instead, though. He passes several more cloth-mimicking bits on the way, and a few saber-mimicking ones in the early bit of the path.

The leap from the third level to the fourth is particularly complex; rather than going from one stable spot to another, he has to leap forward to a single bar, and then bounce off of that, back the way he came and up.

...And what happens if he misses it?

He'd probably just crash into the scrub, rather than going far enough to land in the rock pile beyond it.

Yeah okay he'll try it.

It takes liberal application of the Force but he makes it. Barely.

Success!

His reward is: more jumps. But only a few relatively simple ones, and then he's at the pinnacle of the structure, where the lump is revealed to be a sculpture of a Sith, defeated, lying prone beneath him.

There's a latch in the center of the figure's chest, situated where it won't be seen from below, picked out in fluorescent yellow.

...He unlatches it.

The sculpture's head falls, forward and away from its body, coming to hang a foot or so below on some kind of bar. Meanwhile, red streamers fall from the neck of the sculpture, looking more like viscera than blood.

Um.

What?

The sculpture doesn't appear to do anything further.

...Okay.

He climbs down.

This is straightforward to accomplish.

If he looks back up - yeah, that sure is a beheaded guy.

Quite.

...He doesn't really feel like seeing what Sithy thing is going to be next right now. He wanders back towards the houses.

Nothing stops him.

If he doesn't see anyone outside he is going to go back into the guest house.

Pradnakt is outside, doing forms with her lightsaber; it looks like she's just getting warmed up. She is far enough from the houses that he should be able to get to the guest house without a problem, though.

He would probably try to talk to her if she hadn't warned them that was a bad idea while she was doing lightsaber things. He goes inside, hugs a still-studying Ekkreth, and goes to sleep.

She'll be at her saber practice until nearly midnight.

Ekkreth is still awake.

She stops by the guest house, and waits for Ekkreth to be less engrossed before knocking, quietly.

After a minute she opens the door. "Hello."

"Hey. I thought you might want a snack before I go to bed, if you're going to be up for a while."

"No, I'll probably go to sleep soon."

"All right. See you in the morning."

"See you in the morning."

"Mmhmm." And off she goes.

Ekkreth goes to bed soon after.

Good.

Karzel wakes first the next morning and wanders out of the guest house after his morning ablutions.

Pradnakt emerges not long after and sits in the shade in front of her house, eating hash browns out of a bowl.

He walks over.

"Your art is...really something. And I think one of the sculptures needs to be reset."

"Mmhmm, I noticed that. That one's really meant to be watched, more than explored - loses something if you already know the climax, though, I bet."

"I...suppose."

"Not something you see the value of, I know." She leans back against the door. "I don't know a lot about Jedi, but I know Sith are a lot more individualistic."

"Something that looks that much like a man dying wasn't going to be a pleasant surprise either way."

"And I suppose 'trust me, he had it coming' doesn't help in the slightest." She pauses for another bite of potato. "He did, though, and I'm not going to pretend not to be proud of a success of that magnitude."

"Mm."

"-that was my master, you know. That whole trail's from when I first got here, working stuff out."

"Oh."

"Yeah. The others will be more your speed, I only needed the one."

Nod. "Even before I got to that one, the others were...well, your inspiration doesn't surprise me."

Nod. "That's part of why I want to help your friend. You wind up spending parts of yourself you shouldn't, trying to take on a project like that without enough support."

Nod. "I've been trying to prevent that."

"Yeah," she softens. "And it's a noble impulse. But there's a point where it turns into just another kind of harm, trying to stop someone from having what they need. I don't regret the choices I made, even the ones that hurt me."

"...I'm glad you don't."

"And I don't think she will either. Or she'd regret letting you stop her more, if she's the type for it. There are some things that - you need to know you're strong enough to stop them from ever happening to you again. And this is how we know."

"Ah."

That makes a certain horrible kind of sense.

"Yeah."

Potatoes.