Private The Witch of Endor

[Maeve Linahan]

The water tasted like ash in her mouth when she swam to the surface.

Maeve had no idea what had happened. Why her dashboard had burst into sparks, why her engines blasted with fire or why her ship spiraled out of control, crashing just shy of land. One minute she had been traveling towards it, hoping to uncover answers on an investigation she'd been on for the last month, and in the next, she'd been targeted. Shot at. Shot down.

There should have been no Sith present on the planet. There should have been no real presence at all. Now, Maeve was paying for her mistake to come here.

She broke the ocean surface. Gasping for air, she surveyed her surroundings, unsure of where exactly she'd landed. In the distance, the ruins of the Second Death Star loomed like a beast. She had come so close to it, but now she had to be miles out from its skeletal corpse, where she might've be able to rest and figure out her next step.

She was left to swim. To fight against a tide threatening to drown her.

Maeve clung to her lightsaber like it was a lifeline. In a way, it was. The one thing that would keep her alive if she managed to survive the raging sea of Kef Bir. And that was a very strong if. She was lucky the waves were not so great that they could swallow an entire ship in a single crest, but who knew when they would be? Storms came and went on this world. The next would kill her with ease.

But little did Maeve know that she was not alone in these waters.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Darth Vyle clung to a piece of scrap metal shorn from the rusted husk of the Second Death Star on Kef Bir, the Ocean Moon of Endor, lamenting her fate.

She had come to this system in the aftermath of Exegol in the hopes of finding a place to lay low and regain her strength after the Brotherhood of the Maw had lost the ancient bastion of the Sith. Rage plagued her heart like a cancer at the mere thought of what the Sith had lost. Those damnable fools. Now, the Jedi Order and their cursed Alliance would think themselves untouchable. Beyond reproach.

Unfortunately, before she was able to clear her head and return to the Sith Order to confer with her dark counterparts, the locals had taken it upon themselves to shoot down her ship. They thought themselves clever shooting down vessels — remnants of the Maw that might have escaped their doom in the Unknown Regions — but this time they had bitten off more than they could chew; and she had given them every reason to steer clear of her since. But just as they were now stuck with her, she was stuck with them. A fate worse than death, by Vyle's own summation.

Her only chance at salvation lie in the wreckage of Palpatine's great defeat. Naturally, the ships that had not been salvaged already would be ruined and rusted beyond repair—for an ordinary mechanic, that is. Darth Vyle was no ordinary mechanic. Her sorcery had put together broken things that would never have normally been whole again; and it could put right a ship, so long as the necessary parts were around her.

Then, she would be free amongst the stars again. Free to seek out her compatriots, to punish her enemies, and become the blight she was always meant to be.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve swam for the ruins ahead. It was far closer than the mainland, even if it was miles away, but she was confident in her ability to reach it. Master Severan had taught her to traverse the jungle without touching the ground, to swim against the tides of rivers and up mountainsides. She could do this. It was that, or sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Maeve paused, bright eyes looking up to the clouds. Her heart dropped four stories into her gut. "Oh," she whispered, "Shit."

A wave three times her height approached. She gawked, then with a final thought, inhaled sharply, taking as much breath as she could before the water slammed into her, forcing her back underneath. Black stars burst behind her eyelids. For a moment, her arms flailed, and then desperately, she kicked, piercing the surface with a ragged gasp.

She could not continue to wade in this sea without something to lean on.

Searching for debris, anything from a floating platform to a chunk of steel, Maeve was surprised when she caught sign of a long metal sheet, along with a figure aboard it. Someone else was there. A woman by the looks of it, clinging to the wreckage as if it was the body of a loved one. She couldn't see much beyond the foaming water, but she swam.

"Can you hear me?" she called. The question might've been a strange one, but she had to make sure they were listening. That they were even still alive.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Can you hear me?

The cry, which somehow climbed above the roar of the crashing waves, came with a twinge of something familiar and threatening. Vyle resisted the urge to reach out and touch the mind of the one who had spoken. Her Master's lessons, distant and yet prescient, taught her that being a Sith meant a healthy dose of paranoia was sometimes all that stood between success and the iron-wrought gates of death.

She sucked in a breath and imagined a flame a the center of herself, roaring and hot, shrinking until it was but a flicker. For now, she would proceed with caution, her ability to touch the Force hidden, until she had learned more about her unfortunate sea mate.

"I'm here," she cried, putting as much fear into her voice as she could muster. She paddled with one hand towards the voice, and cleaved to her scrap metal raft with the other. "Swim to me! You'll never make it in the water alone."

Now that the current had bobbed them closer, Vyle could see the one who had called out to her. Another woman, her dampened hair like rivulets of gold matted together into clumps by the raging salt water tempest around them. Vyle pushed her way through a spray of dark ocean water towards where the golden woman floated, raftless. How she had even made it this far was beyond the knowings of the Sith witch, though she suspected the twinge she had felt earlier played its part in the woman's survival.

She should leave the woman to drown; but curiosity had its claws in Vyle now. There was no harm in letting Fate pull their strings a little while longer.

"Here," she called out, and reached out with the one hand not clinging to the raft. "There's room enough for both of us. Grab hold!"

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve felt nothing as she neared the woman. No warning scream in the Force. No alarm bells ringing in the back of her mind. Just hope and relief that she was not the only person stranded in these stormy waters.

Wading closer to the woman, Maeve was careful to hide the hilt of her lightsaber into her sleeve, out of sight. Grateful as she was to find another, they were still a stranger, and even if the Force had ordained their meeting, she did not trust those she only just met. They could have been Sith for all knew, cast out in the aftermath of Exegol's cleansing.

But the sound and look of fear in the woman told Maeve otherwise.

She could recognize her features more distinctly in the salt sea spray: pale skin, hazel green eyes and a shock of red hair. She was neither too thin nor too heavy, but strong. Certainly strong enough to kick over to Maeve with the metal raft in tow, one hand outreached. And in it, she saw a glimpse of salvation.

Maeve extended for it without hesitation, without thinking.

Every one of her muscles ached. She'd been swimming for only minutes, and already her energy felt sapped, the former waves having stripped her of much of her strength and stamina. But holding onto the woman's arm and her raft, she felt better. Saved. The odds of survival were skyrocketing in her mind now, even if they were still horrendously low.

"I thought I was alone. I did not think there would be someone else out on these waters." Her fingers wrapped around the edge of the platform. She traded a look with the woman, hair clumped to the sides of her face. "How long have you been out here?"

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

How long had she been out here?

Her departure from the jagged shoreline had seemed only minutes in the past, but she realized it must have been longer. Looking back, that same shore was but a blurred outline on the greyed horizon. Were she more familiar with Endor's Ocean Moon, she might have used her magick to teleport to the ruined superstructure, but ignorant as she was of the world, she could not risk it. And now she was here, clinging to to sheet of metal amidst a roiling sea, her only companion a woman she'd only just met.

A woman she was wary of.

"An hour, perhaps," she replied as another spray of salt water struck the side of their raft. "Though without this sheet of metal, I fear the ocean would have swallowed me up by now."

Vyle had questions of her own. Who was this woman and how had she come to be stranded on Kef Bir? The same way she had? Was she too fleeing the ashes of Exegol? Nothing about the golden woman screamed 'Sith,' nor any of the Maw's minions. Even soaked, she was more regal and fair than any being usually found in this part of the galaxy. Yet, neither of them had time to interrogate each other. Vyle's questions would have to wait until they were safe on dry land—or metal, as it were.

"Have you still any strength?" she asked of the golden woman. She turned and pointed to where some of the Death Star's superstructure dipped low, like a boarding ramp. They could get up from there, if Kef Bir's angry waves didn't slam them against the side of a floating turbolaser. "I have been trying to push the raft there, but the waters are stronger than I am, and this metal too heavy."

As if to make her point, the ocean around them began to dip as if they had been cast into the cleft of a deep valley, the waves rising like mountains all around them. Another storm swell, and this time, she could not risk the Force to protect herself.

Not yet.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

An hour. She'd been stranded longer than Maeve, that was certain, but better that than an entire day. It meant the woman still had strength and spirit left to spare.

She ignored her own suspicions, trading it for pure survival instinct. When another wave crested towards them, Maeve braced herself against the raft. Unlike before, it didn't force her underwater, though it did slam against her side, nearly squeezing what little air she had from her lungs.

A sodden cough wracked her chest. The taste of salt was heavy on her tongue, her lips, and she could feel it burning in her throat. Had it not been for her training, she more than likely would have drowned only moments after her ship had met the water. How the woman beside her had done the same, she'd no idea. Part of her was tempted to ask. The other part, not. Chances were, she was the sole survivor of her party, lost to the sea.

She could find out more later. For now, they had to survive.

"I've enough strength to take us," she said, considering the distance between them and the wreckage of the Death Star ahead. Another spray of salt water lashed at her hair. "The storm will only worsen as night creeps in. Together, we may be able to reach the ruins before high tide reaches us."

"Do you think you can do it?" she asked, but part of Maeve already knew the answer. Of course she would. What other choice did they have?

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Did she think she could do it?

Internally, Darth Vyle scoffed. Were she able to use her powers, she could turn their raft into a hovercraft that could effortlessly carry them across the sea to the ruins of the Death Star. Such transversal would take minuscule effort, but a thought on her part. Yet, that was not who she was able to be—not now. The golden woman would almost certainly suspect her identity if she didn't show some measure of fatigue.

She squinted into the distance where the low dip in the structure slid like a knife beneath the waves. "If we work together, I think I can make it the rest of the way," she said, her breath ragged with fatigue.

Without her magick actively surrounding her, the frigid teeth of Kef Bir's planetary ocean was seeping beneath the cloth of her clothing, numbing her skin. If she remained in the water too much longer, her strength really would be sapped, and her reliance on the other woman become genuine. She could not allow that to happen.

When we allow others to cover for our shortcomings, we in debt ourselves to them, and invariably give them power over us, her Master had once taught her. If another being has power over you, then has the Force truly broken your chains?

She had known the answer then as clearly as she did now. A resounding No.

Darth Vyle pushed out with her legs and began kicking the raft in the direction of their salvation. It was heavier now with the two of them, but dry metal was close at hand, and she had an extra set of legs now to help carry her. Above them, angry storm clouds towered like dark cathedrals, their roofs brimming with the wrath of this planet's gods.

If the storm unleashed on them, it would be over before it began. "Harder," she said as the first droplets of rain fell into her hair. "We must swim harder. If that storm hits us, the waves will pummel us into the rubble."

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

"I know!" Maeve called back to the woman, staring on.

Night was descending. Dark clouds swirled in the sky, dimming, and faraway, she caught the flash of lightning, the roar of thunder. The storm was moving unnaturally quick, as if influenced by the darkness that had taken root in the ruins, but that didn't much surprise her. The Second Death Star was where Palpatine had been murdered. Even if he had come back to haunt the galaxy during Rey Skywalker's rise, this world was still his first gravesite. Still plagued with a darkness as vile as that of Exegol's.

She kicked hard and breathed harder, choking on saltwater. Maeve's only solace was the familiar weight of her lightsaber tucked in her outfit, smacking rhythmically against her arm, as well as the woman at her side, panting as they swam for the steel-made shoreline. They were making far better progress together than alone. And yet, the space between them and land was like a gulf. A gasping chasm.

All that Maeve could ignore. What troubled her was what she felt.

"Wait," she said, stricken by a bolt of sudden fear. A shudder climbed her back. Not from the cold water, but from what lurked in it. "Something just brushed my leg."

A terrifying silence fell between them. Just the sound of rolling waves and distant thunder. Then, bursting from the water's surface, a creature half the size of the next wave lunged for the both of them, jaw open and teeth bared.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Instinct took over the moment the creature appeared out of the water. Vyle let go of the raft and dove beneath the waves just as the creature struck. The force of its blow splintered the raft into smaller chunks, and Vyle had to employ some underwater acrobatics to avoid being run through by jagged shards of metal.

A moment later, she broke the surface and sucked in a deep breath of freezing air before searching her immediate surroundings for the golden woman. She had to squint to find her, but in her brief moments underwater, the woman had managed to put considerable distance between them, appearing as a mere speck against the swelling waves.

A pang of anger lanced through Vyle, fleeting and momentary, at the thought of the other woman having left her to be eaten. Her ire was swallowed up in the next instant, when the creature caught sight of the fleeing woman and launched itself in her direction. The serpent — for that is what it truly had to be — was far faster than the woman could ever hope to swim. Its sleek, oily form undulated through the water as easily as a bird took to the air and within seconds it was closing the gap between them.

Vyle couldn't understand why she chose that moment to cling to her false identity. She could have just let the woman die and be rid of her, but then the serpent would have returned for her and she would have to expend valuable energy killing it. Energy she wasn't sure she had.

"Hey," she shouted, waving her hands above the waves, above the violent drumming of the downpour, desperately trying to seize the woman's attention. "It's coming! It's right behind you!"

She didn't see what happened next, because the water dipped again as she entered the cleft between two enormous waves. It was all Vyle could do to grab and hold on to a splintered piece of the raft that remained, and cling to it for dear life.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

And just like that, her odds of survival dipped back to zero.

The creature directly on top of the platform, causing another wave to slam into her chest, throwing her aside like a toy boat in a maelstrom. She barely had time to gasp before she was back underwater. Her lungs and calves ached, but she searched again for the surface, thrashing for air.

When she reached it, she didn't bother seeking out the makeshift raft or the woman. She fucking swam.

It was only when she caught up to a safer distance that she turned and ducked her head in the water, her eyes surveying the blue haze. As a Firrerreo, she could see across the spectrum of light, and as a Jedi, she'd trained her senses to perfection, so when she searched for the monster, she found it.

The beast was massive. A twisting, writhing shadow in the water. Its tail stretched on to the length of a starfighter, and she counted more than a dozen eyes on its head, irises blacker than the approaching night. Maeve had fought Sith Lords, alchemical abominations, and explored the darkest depths of hell, but never had she seen a creature like that.

She felt for her lightsaber. Maeve had hoped to keep her Jedi identity a secret, but with a threat like this before her, she had to forgo her personal objections and take the beast head-on. She had to fight.

At the sound of the woman's outcry, barely audible through the sudden rain, Maeve activated her blade. Light shone through the dark. Ahead, the beast spiraled towards her, opening its maw once again. She drew in a sharp breath, then twisting in the water, narrowly avoided its teeth. Then, she drove her blade into the side of its face, and like a climber sinking their pick into a cliffside, now she hung on for dear life.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

A lightsaber.

The appearance of the plasma blade made the pieces of the puzzles finally fit. The twinge she had felt before their first meeting. The uncertainty that had plagued her in the minutes since. The golden woman was a Jedi. Even with her shrunken presence in the Force, the Light coming from the woman buffeted Darth Vyle in waves as the Jedi woman shifted from survival mode into a willingness to fight the creature.

Vyle clung to the metal shard that kept her afloat, marveling at the skill and deftness with which the Jedi fought despite being submerged in stormy ocean waters. As she did, a plan wormed its way to the front of her mind, and now she understood why the Darkness had presented the two women to one another. She was not going to kill this Jedi—not yet. Nor would she allow her to be eaten.

She was going to use the Jedi.

It was a delicious thought. A Sith witch stranded on an ocean moon with few hopes of salvation. Then, who should come along to the rescue but a Jedi? How succulent would it be to taste the Jedi's fear, revulsion, and self-loathing once she realized the blight she hand unleashed upon the galaxy. Yes, Vyle would help this Jedi, and be helped in turn. The reward would be too sweet for her to turn down. And she deserved something after being stranded on this shithole of a world for so long.

Still, she was determined not to let the Jedi do everything for her. She refused to be life-debted to the golden woman, whatever the eventual benefits would be. So, with the serpent's scaly back to her, and the Jedi's lightsaber lodged in its face, Vyle picked up a smaller shard of the broken raft and swam as hard as she could at the creature's back.

The damage the Jedi had inflicted cause it to lash its tail in pain, forcing Vyle to duck underwater again to avoid what would no doubt have been a bone-shattering slap. But then she was up underneath it, and with a swift, powerful motion, she drove the shard up, slicing through the creature's soft underside as if through a thin membrane, and right into its lungs. Even from underwater, she heard it heave in pain, and then she quickly danced away to avoid being caught up in its writhing and dragged down to the depths with it.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve was lucky her blade could work in the water, else it would have long been disabled and ruined, short-circuited and worthless. Now, she had the opportunity to defend herself, and by the Force, did she defend herself.

The serpent shrieked as her lightsaber sank deeper into its flesh. One of its eyes, really. She could see the other twelve focus in on her, a sight that typically would have disturbed her, but now that she was on the offensive, fear was a long-gone feeling. Confidence swelled in her as she stood atop the beast. Nothing would stop her from sending it back into the lightless abyss it had crawled out from.

Well, until it erupted from the water, taking her with it.

She wavered. Although her lightsaber should have slid down the serpent's body like a knife through warm butter, its scales were thick and resistant, and the water certainly wasn't helping. Everything was slippery, and Maeve could barely keep her heels attached to the creature's side. How she still clung to it now was a miracle. The serpent was doing everything to throw her off, dipping in and out of the water in a mad frenzy.

It was the third thrashing that cast her off its side.

Maeve flew, sailing through the downpour, then crashing into the water. It felt like her back had met stone. She thought then, surely, the serpent would come back around to swallow her whole, but it didn't. What happened instead left her in utter shock.

The woman from before, who she could've sworn had vanished into the sea, had returned—and with a weapon of her own. Using a leftover shard of their raft, she had sunken it under and plunged it into the naked belly of the serpent, drawing out a spray of black blood and a shriek unlike anything Maeve had ever heard before. She gaped.

Then, the beast turned over, sinking into the sea.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Darth Vyle erupted to the surface again. A gash she had received from being too slow to avoid one of the serpent's scaly fins marred her forehead, and the blood that spattered her face and was caked into her hair was a mixture of her own and the beast she had helped slay.

Her breaths came more harshly now, fatigue magnifying the weight of her limbs. The flickering candlelight at the center of her being cried out to become an inferno again. The Shadow demanded use. Urged her to draw from it to restore her strength, to mend her broken skin, to lift her body from the water and the cold that had invaded every inch of her. Still, she refused it.

It was the way of the Sith to deprive the body of its needs. Her training had been many times more vile than this petty trial. She need only wait. The Jedi had a hero complex. It was the weakness of their Order. The golden woman would be unable to leave Vyle in the water to drown, and once she was pulled to safety, her strength would soon return.

Bitterly tired as she had become, Vyle had a role to play, and so summoned her fear and panic and began to thrash wildly in the water. "Where are you?!" she called out to the Jedi.

A blast of thunder swallowed her cries. The sky was black as night, now—a false night, for it was the storm that had eaten Endor's light. Rain lashed at her bloodied face like a punishing whip. She cried out again, "Are you still alive?!"

Knowing full well that it would take more than this to kill a Jedi.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

For a threat she'd never seen before, killing the serpent had been remarkably fast.

Maeve waded back, her shock dissipating as her focus returned to her surroundings. By now she realized the storm was upon them, a heavy downpour that beat against the waters like a thousand drums. Wind lashed at her clammy hair. Waves threatened to pull her back under. What was supposed to have been an easy swim to the ruins had turned into a disaster, and now she was back to square one.

Do not let fear cloud your judgment, Master Severin's voice said in the back of her mind. You were taught better than that. You were taught to survive.

Maeve took in another fragmented breath. Even though her strength was sapped, even though she felt ready to collapse and sink into the ocean's depths, she pushed on. Swimming up the next oncoming wave, she pierced through the crest, her hands sharp as the blade now tucked into her outfit. She could not risk losing her saber amid this chaos.

And then, like a miracle sent from the stars, Maeve saw it. Another platform. Another raft.

She reached for it desperately, climbing aboard with two very sore arms. She didn't bother questioning how it managed to stay afloat in the midst of this storm. Instead, she sought out the other woman, lost to the waves and the night. Only shards of lightning guided her vision. The first few, she saw nothing. Just black water and the serpent's blood. But by the fifth bolt, she spotted the woman, red hair gleaming in the dark.

"I'm here!" she shouted back. "Over here!"

Maeve rose up on the platform. The woman was close, pushed onward by the next wave, thrashing to stay above the surface, so with one arm attached to a jutting pole and the other extended out to the water, she beckoned for her, calling, "Take my hand!"

Because if either of them hoped it survive, it would have to be together.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Vyle stretched out her hand and grasped the Jedi's with all her strength. The both of them were slick and wet, and Vyle briefly thought there was no way the golden woman could pull her aboard the new raft. She would surely slip from her fingers before the Jedi could accomplish this task. Yet she had strength of her own, and used what remained of it to haul herself aboard the raft, where she collapsed into a fit of insane laughter.

"Perhaps this world is not the prison I'd imagined," she lied as easily as the rain yet fell from the charcoal sky, shouting over the storm and waves. "Clearly, the gods who watch over it want us alive, and that's more than I can say for those who watch over other worlds."

It wasn't wholly untruth. That they had survived this long was a miracle. The storm and waves, Vyle had predicted would be an annoying impediment, but nothing insurmountable. The serpent, though—that had been a trial beyond even her ability to glimpse the future; and now she faced another uncertainty.

The two women had regained their raft. They were closer now to the Death Star's superstructure than they had been. It would be no small feat to get them where they wanted to go, but now that the golden woman had revealed herself to be a Jedi, she believed them able to make it without much further delay. The Force would hasten their arrival.

Yet the conundrum she faced was still a difficult one. She had to be more careful now that she knew her companion was a Jedi. And she needed to discover what to do with her once she had found a means to escape this accursed moon.

Well, one step at a time. "You were brilliant back there," she said, draping one arm over her bleeding forehead. "Either the storm was playing tricks on my eyes, or that was a laser sword you used. You some kind of Jedi?"

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

"If I was brilliant, then you were astonishing."

She offered a rare smile, even as the storm raged around them. A thunderclap roared above, ringing in her ears, and Maeve fought to keep her footing aboard the platform. Wave after crashing wave, she struggled to maintain their balance and keep them from sinking along with the beast they'd slain. The two of them had come this far. They could go a little further.

Maneuvering their makeshift raft through the maelstrom, Maeve looked back to the slumped woman, covered in blood the color of pitch. Her question might've been cause for concern for a Shadow, but it had been posed less like a threatening demand and more like a bit of unbothered curiosity. Who called it a 'laser sword' besides someone who knew very little of the Force? This couldn't be a Sith, could it?

Paranoia subsiding, Maeve chose to be honest. "I am."

She admitted it without regret. It was not like she could hide the truth besides, not after openly wielding her lightsaber. What else could she say? That she found it off a dead man? Wouldn't explain her expert use of it. Best to come clean now and see if the woman really was worth trusting.

"What's your name?" she called over the wind and rain. Introductions was the least either of them could do now that the worst was over. So they thought.

Yet another wave crashed against the platform. It would be quite a ways from the wreckage of the Second Death Star, but they were close. Closer than ever.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Vyle's stomach twisted into a hangman's knot. Sith were reserved few praises during their training. To receive one from a Jedi was disconcerting to say the least, but she swallowed it without so much as blinking strangely. She remained splayed out on the floor of the raft, only rising once a spray of ocean water caught her open mouth, bringing her up in a coughing fit.

"Faye," she said.

If receiving a compliment from a Jedi was bad, having to use her dead name was worse, even if it was a shortened form. Faye was who she had been—not what she had become. Faye was a dead girl, and Darth Vyle was merely wearing her countenance.

She shielded her eyes against the driving rain, able to see the outline of the Death Star only through shards of lightning. This close, an unnatural coldness wafted out of the haunted structure, crashing down on them like blasts of wind. This was not an ordinary cold, it was the stain of darkness left behind by Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, who were both rumored to have perished before the structure crashed on Kef Bir.

"What brings a Jedi all the way out here?" Vyle asked, and for once, the character she was playing that the woman herself were in alignment in the curiosity. "I haven't seen any other crash landings out here, but for myself."

She wanted to ask the Jedi where she was coming from, but that would be too much at the moment, and the Jedi might tell her anyways.

Lightning briefly distracted her, as a blast of it crashed against the hollow superlaser disk miles above them. An omen, she decided. But for what, she could not say.

Maeve Linahan​

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[Maeve Linahan]

Faye. So that was her name. It sounded like the truth.

Rainwater trickled down the bridge of Maeve's nose as she looked down to where the woman was. "I'm Maeve," she said. "And I came here to learn."

Lightning rippled through the clouds, spider webbing outward in a net of broken filaments. Ahead, jagged spires and the remnants of the Second Death Star loomed, flashing menacingly in the storm. "There are rumors about this place. Dark spirits lurking the corridors. Ghost ships in the hangars."

Her voice rose over the storm. Both hands outstretched, she used the Force to keep the platform steady and the water from sinking them both. "Most people forget that millions of Imperial soldiers and slaves died here when General Calrissian destroyed the weapon's main reactor. And then there was Emperor Palpatine, his original body cast down by his own servant and destroyed."

"The Dark Side has made a home in these ruins. I intend to find out more about it." Bright eyes flickered to Faye's. "Why are you here?"

If she'd been out on the water for the last hour, then the woman had only recently visited Kef Bir. Why she would come to a moon so remote, teetering on the edge of the Unknown Regions, was a curiosity. She couldn't have been some ordinary tourist.

Darth Vyle​

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[Darth Vyle]

Vyle combed through the information with all the interest and attention of a house cat baking under the afternoon sun. Nothing Maeve said was unknown to the Sith witch, but the Jedi just couldn't help themselves. Pretentious fools that they were, they had to flaunt their inflated sense of awareness and knowledge in front of everyone they met. Even so, Darth Vyle held firm and kept up her facade, hiding her roiling disgust under a pinched face.

"I don't know anything about all of that," she said, feigning confusion. "I was sent out here to see if there was anything worth salvaging. Artifacts of the Old Empire go for a fortune, especially to collectors in the Core. Scrap metal can be sold on planets like Bracca, depending on the quality and the make." She shrugged, as if it were the most natural thing in the universe to scavenge from the ruins of the Death Star itself. "It's not a glamorous job—" She gestured to abject shit storm still raging around them "—but it pays. Pays real good."

She wished there were still Sith artifacts to pick clean from the ruins of Palpatine's throne room; but most Sith lore suggested that it had long been scavenged by the Acolytes of the Beyond and other Sith cults shortly after the Battle of Endor.

"The locals didn't take a liking to the presence of my ship," Vyle continued. "They're really paranoid about anyone who wants to get near this place. Say it brings bad omens." She grimaced, because it wasn't the omens the locales feared, so much as the witch they had found in the wreckage of her ship. "Now, my only hope of getting off this soaked rock is any ships the Empire might have left onboard, assuming those haven't been picked clean too. I suppose that puts us in the same boat." She glanced down at the raft they were still floating on. "No pun intended."

Maeve Linahan​

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