Immediately he was falling. A torrent of blood and vile liquid rushed up the gaping throat, sweeping him out onto the field of bones. Blinking, gagging, he barely retained a grip on his light saber as the massive headless body dropped to the ground behind him with a mighty, wet crash.

It was lucky he had retained his weapon, for Maris was on him in an instant, blades humming and whirling. He barely raised hi lightsaber in time to avoid decapitation and stumbled awkwardly to his feet to deflect another attempt.

"You've made me angry now," she said, "and I'll make you regret that."

"I gave you a choice," he said, blocking another double blow "You killed that thing, not me."

"The dark side doesn't split hairs," she snarled.

Her eyes blazed red as she rained blow after blow upon him. He staggered backward, weakened by more than just his battle with the bull rancor.

He was fighting himself-but not in some flashback-inspired hallucination, where the Jedi and the Sith warred in him for control of his future. This time the fight was real, and his opponent was as joyously rich in the dark side as he had ever been. She, too, had lost someone she cared deeply about; she, too, had been sent out into the hard galaxy to fend for herself. They should be helping each other, not fighting each other. But with Bail Organa watching, he couldn't even raise the possibility of a truce. He was even using Soresu moves against her raw, unpredictable lunges, just as the vision of himself had done in Jedi robes. And yet. . .

As he defended himself, he saw nothing but self-pity and fear in her eyes. Both were inferior to pure anger, although both could be potent gateways to the true mastery of the dark side that his Master had demonstrated to him. Maris was a newcomer, barely beginning her journey-as he, too, was journeying along a path toward full mastery. For the first time, he understood that the

I one didn't come in two shades only: dark and light, distinct and combative, never meeting in the middle to form gray. Those were ideals, and ideals existed solely for philosophers and theoreticians to argue over. In the real world, dark and light coexisted in varying proportions; nothing was ever static. Thus this former Jedi Padawan could turn to the dark side after a lifetime serving the light-and she could just as easily turn back to the light afterward, if she survived.

Light, dark, Shaak Ti had tried to tell him, they are just directions.

We're always moving, he thought, toward the dark or toward the light. It's impossible to stand still. Some, like Darth Vader and the Emperor, had been descending through the dark side for so long that the light must have become a faint and distant memory. Some hovered eternally in the gray, never entirely choosing a side. There were, in fact, no actual sides, just the direction in which one happened to be moving. It was all relative.

Coming to that understanding gave him a new kind of strength. When Sith betrayed one another, it wasn't because they were enemies. Their paths had simply diverged. So fighting Maris wasn't turning his back on the dark side. She was simply in his way, like so many other people before him.

Do not be fooled, Shaak Ti had also said, as so many have before you, that you walk on anything other than your own two feet.

Blocking Maris Brood's spinning strikes, he changed from the staid form of Soresu into the more aggressive Juyo favored by the dark side. Maris noticed the shift in his fighting style but, having only been trained in Jedi methods, failed to understand what it meant. She continued attacking with increasing desperation, even as he began to drive her back across the mounds of bones, past the body of her giant pet and away from Senator Organa. Her breathing became hard and her moves less focused. Fear began to dominate the wild look in her eyes. She was close to losing her concentration entirely.

Use the fear, he wanted to tell her. Use the fear to make you angry, because anger makes you strong. I killed your Master. Mm, tried to kill me and I am stronger for it. You could be, too, if you would only realize that simple truth!

But even in the depths of her darkness, the light had corrupted her too deeply. She was a lost cause.

Enough, he thought.

Raising his left hand, he used the Force to lift a mound of bones into the air. Rattling and tumbling, they swirled around tin two of them, picking up speed. Maris didn't know where to look. While she was distracted, he disarmed her with two swift, precise moves. Her blades skittered away through the bones and she fell back, rubbing her singed forearms. Defiance gleamed in her eyes, but too late. Much too late.

When she turned to run, he struck her in the back with Sith lightning and she fell sprawling to the bones.

With his lightsaber held loosely in his right hand, he approached her.

"No," she gasped, making a futile attempt to imitate the bone dance floating around them. He batted the missiles away.

"Please!" Defiance turned to despair and still she resisted het anger. "Don't!"

"Why not?" He stood over her, lightsaber raised, point-down, to strike. "If you're the slave to the dark side you claim to be, I'd be doing the galaxy a favor."

"But it's not my fault. Shaak Ti abandoned me on this horrible planet." Tears sparkled in her eyes. "Felucia is evil. It corrupted me. Just let me get away from here and I'll put the dark side behind me. I want to."

"Why should I believe you?"

She came up onto her knees. "Please let me go. You've won, haven't you? The Senator is yours. There's no need to kill me." She reached for him. "Save me instead. Please."

He backed away, repelled by the display. You're not worthy of the dark side, he wanted to say.

But this was what the dark side hail turned her into. She had aspired to being a Jedi Knight, once, and now she was reduced to begging for her life. What talents she had were poisoned, turned to destruction, directed inward-used toward no greater end than her own survival.

The dark side had changed Felucia in a similar fashion. The stench of death and decay in his nostrils came from more than the bull rancor's blood all over him.

Corruption.

He lowered his lightsaber and deactivated it. The swirl of bones fell to the ground with a clatter.

She clambered to her feet, looking as though she couldn't believe her luck. "Thank you."

He wasn't sure he could believe it, either. Was he sparing her Out of pity or because he recognized the emotions poisoning her? "Don't say anything. Just get out of here."

"Can I come with you? I don't want to stay here..."

"You'll just have to, until another ship comes along. Or maybe the Imperials can give you a lift."

She backed away, as though he might change his mind at any moment. Then she turned and made a break for the tree line. He watched her in case she went for her weapons and tried to take him by surprise. For all her pleading and bargaining, he didn't trust her one millimeter.

At the tree line she stopped and turned. Her tears were gone. Then, with a parting wink, she was, too.

Chapter 25