Chapter Ninety Five

Warning Lemon incoming:

Letting out a moan, Aayla threw back her head, meeting Harry's lips with her own as he slowly ran his length in and out of her from behind. His hips moved on their own, crashing into her backstrokes, while his hands were busy elsewhere. One was across Aayla's chest, his fingers playing with her purple nipple and helping to hold her upright while he pounded her body slowly into so much orgasmic mush. The other was playing with her Tchin, her leftmost lek.

Their lovemaking had started slowly and lovingly as it always did. Both of them reveled in bringing the other pleasure, that pleasure feeding the pleasure they felt via the mental plane. That link seemed to carry more from the physical to the mental than vice-versa for some reason, which they both supposed could be set down to their Occlumency shields. But eventually, as it always did, their lovemaking became somewhat frenetic after the first hour or so of interspersed foreplay.

Deciding that she had enough of being almost entirely on the receiving end, Aayla pulled forward slightly, pushing back with one hand to push Harry away from her before turning. As Harry sat with his back against the wall beside their bed, Aayla crawled into his lap, reaching down as they whispered I-love-yous to one another both verbally and mentally. So conjoined were they via their bond that both of them felt both aspects of the act as she slid Harry's cock home into her aching flower. So intense was the pleasure loop, the physical feeding into the mental and vice versa, that Aayla let out a scream, throwing her head back,

Harry was in similar straits, but he had enough presence of mind to add to his lover's pleasure, leaning down to take one of her purple nipples into his mouth. The spicy taste of Aayla's sweat merged with the somewhat rubbery texture of the nipple as Harry worked it with his tongue, lashing it from side to side before sucking lightly, then, feeling Aayla's response, harder.

As this was going on Aayla recovered from the overwhelming moment of pleasure to find that Harry was concentrating on her nipple so much both because he really enjoyed playing with them and as a way to not let the sensation of his cock being squeezed by her insides overwhelm him. Heh, well that will never do. With that thought Aayla took command of their coupling, pulling back just enough to somehow loop her legs around Harry's waist, then beginning to use her thigh muscles alone to bounce up and down on his shaft, moaning in happiness as she felt Harry's pleasure rising along with her own. One hand clasped the back of his neck, while the fingers of her other hand wound through his hair. Unlike her disgust for hair anywhere else, Aayla actually enjoyed the feel of Harry's sweaty, perpetually windswept hair. It felt silky smooth under her fingers, not so coarse. And on his head there's little chance that it sticks in my teeth or gets up my nose.

Feeling that thought and the gurgling laughter accompanying it, Harry responded in kind before pulling away from Aayla nipples to first lick and bite at her neck and lekku before capturing her lips with his. Then he began to match Aayla's thrusts down with his own thrusts upward. "Fuck, Aayla! You feel sooo good around me, love! I can never get enough of this!"

"Mmmmm, me too, Harry! Oh God, I love you so much, so much!" Aayla replied.

"Always, always love you!" Harry roared mentally, the cycle of pleasure once more overwhelming them. That was a problem with their coupling like this, if it could be called that: once they were conjoined so tightly like this, their minds and bodies merging, the pleasure became too intense for them to keep going for very long.

Soon that pleasure started to rise to another crescendo. Feeling it coming, Harry grabbed Aayla's ass with his hands, forcefully lifting her up just enough to lay her back down on the bed, never stopping as he continued to saw in and out of her. Finally Aayla humped up against his downward thrusts once more, her whole body going rigid, her legs splaying out from where they had been locked around Harry's waist as her eyes rolled back in her head, her lekku also going rigid.

A second before his lover's pleasure overrode his self-control, Harry pulled his cock out just in time. The instant he was out Harry erupted all over Aayla stomach, several shots going so far as to hit the undersides of her breasts.

End Lemon

As his seed flowed down Aayla's side, Harry smiled as he felt her thanks and surging love through their connection. It was very, very hard to pull out of her like that, but they had run out of contraceptive pills and condoms nearly a year ago after leaving the Dheas homeworld.

Harry routinely cursed himself for not thinking to try and copy the contraceptive pills when they had them. But none of them had any idea what went into those pills, and they hadn't yet found a planet that had anything they could use. The last few planets they had seen hadn't had any kind of contraceptives that could work on humans or Twi'lek, their inhabitants having been gas breathers. Harry still could conjure up condoms, of course, but they had no wish to even tempt fate, and it was a serious issue since, as they had seen on the Horde world, Twi'lek and humans could breed, so pulling out was a necessity.

"I want to be a mother some day, Harry, but not right now, so thank you," Aayla said, feeling Harry's rueful agreement even as she said the words aloud.

It had not taken the two lovers very long after they had left the Republic behind to take this final step in their relationship. This had surprised no one, though the two of them had been surprised by how differently going all the way physically differed from their mental attempts to do the same. The pain of Aayla's first time had been very real and had carried through the link so much that it had nearly been enough of a turn off to cause them to almost stop, so shocking it had been.

They had come through it, however and ever since their lovemaking had become part of their relationship. They didn't, as Alecto had once crudely put it after trying a juice made from an unknown fruit which acted on him like rotgut, "go at it like Rancors'". Most days they were just too tired from all of their duties and training by the time they got to bed. They made love inside their heads every night, as they had for the first year of their travels aboard the Bane, but that was a far cry from the physical expression of their love. So they did it as often as they could, and their relationship had somehow deepened because of it.

They exchanged a slow, languid kiss, both of them thinking about whether they could get away with starting another session. But then they felt Master Fay reaching out for them mentally, and Harry quickly responded with the mental equivalent of a, 'be right there.' The lovers had quickly learned to respond to such mental nudges promptly, lest Master Fay or someone else send a stronger probe their way. The blushes Quinlan and Fay had when the two lovers showed up on the bridge after that had been fun, but not something any of them wanted to see again.

Harry quickly hopped off of Aayla, while Aayla lay back, taking a moment to watch him move through their shared room, smiling at what she, admittedly from a biased point of view, thought was the most attractive male ass in the galaxy. He turned to her dryly, sending back the thought, "It takes one to know one, love," causing Aayla to let loose a gurgle of laughter.

Even as she did, though, she felt a sense of triumph as her eyes shifted once more down to his genitalia, which was completely hairless. Aayla had never gotten used to the hairs down there, so Harry had figured out a way to use the body morphing technique to completely stop hair from growing back down there as a birthday present to her.

In return, Aayla had grown her breasts somewhat. Not to the point where it was completely stupid, but to the point where they were certainly a little larger than they would naturally have been.

Now she preened a little as Harry paused in his pulling on his pants to look at her as she stood up, her breasts and lekku twitching as she moved.

"None of that, love," Harryadmonished, shaking his head. "You won't tempt me into trying to convince us to stay in bed again. You felt Master Fay just like I did."

"True," Aayla said with a chuckle, turning around quickly and moving to the dresser they shared without any further overtly flirtatious moves. The anticipation they had felt in Master Fay's mental sending was such that both knew immediately what was happening. They were there: they were at Ruusan.

As the two of them had known would be the case, the others had already gathered on the bridge, watching Master Fay, who had once more taken the captain's chair, her eyes closed in meditation. "We are almost at the center of the disturbance in the Force," she said simply, her eyes not opening as she addressed them all. "We will be coming out within the next three minutes, and I wish us to be prepared for anything."

"Do you expect physical danger, master?" Harry asked. He could feel the oddity that they were closing with, though couldn't really tell anything else about it in hyperspace like this. Nor could any of the other Jedi save for the two Masters.

"It is not impossible that we will face physical threats, though I believe that the majority of the threats we face will be more metaphysical in nature," Fay replied in a roundabout manner.

As the others looked at her, Fay opened her eyes and smiled at them all even as Micah closed his own, concentrating on sending his mind out in turn. "The Dark Side and the Light Side are literally at war with one another at Ruusan. It reverberates around the system as if the Thought Bomb that ended the New Sith Wars and killed most of the Army of Light had just gone off rather than a thousand years ago. What odd permutations this might've caused in the physical realm I do not know and cannot predict. My senses are swamped with it, so you'll forgive me for not being any more clear."

Harry moved over with Aayla as one, putting their arms around Fay in a wordless hug, with Lily resting both of her ethereal hands on Fay's shoulders. Behind them Alecto and Quinlan looked on, concern visible on their faces. All of them remembered how she had nearly killed herself fighting the plague and had no wish to ever see it again.

Her fingers twisting into Lily's ethereal ones and Harry's physical ones, Fay smiled. "I'm not close to collapse, dears. It's just that I've been feeling this for the last few hours, and it's beginning to wear on me. The emotions both sides of that conflict felt are still there in the Force, and they are hammering at my mind now. It's making me a bit…"

"Tetchy," Lily supplied from her position behind her friend.

"…That works for now, yes," Fay replied dryly, looking up at her friend. Lily had been there throughout it all, and talking to the ghost had soothed her

The other Jedi exchanged glances. "Will we have to deal with the same kind of thing?"

"I'm afraid so. Coming here was necessary, but the Force never indicated it would be simple."

"I suggest we all take a few moments to shore up our mental barriers," Harry said, looking at the others. "Just in case."

Fay nodded grimly. "I've been doing that ever since we got close enough for me to feel what was going on. You'll need to devote at least part of your attention to it at all times while we are in this system."

Quinlan and Alecto both winced at that. Their mental defenses were not as strong as those of the rest. Quinlan in particular was vulnerable to being attacked mentally, thanks to his powers as a Kiffar.

"We're coming out of hyperspace," Lily said, having kept one eye on the hyperspace computer. Harry idly noticed that she and Fay were still holding hands, despite the drain it must have been putting on both of them. "I'd say, prepare yourselves, everybody."

The ship came out of hyperspace into a system that had numerous planets but no sign of space-faring life. There was a bright yellow star close in while another white dwarf was in the distance. At least two of the planets were in the life bearing range, the others were either too far away or two close. Already they could see that many of the moons and outer planets were pockmarked, signs of ancient battles still evident, preserved by the lack of atmosphere. But the view of the system was nothing in comparison to the feel of the place.

Hate, anger, fear, fear, determination, shock, grim understanding, hate, resolve, a love of duty, a love of people, cold rage, obsession. All these emotions and more whirled around them as they entered, hammering the Jedi's minds like a tornado against a series of bunkers. The emotions were not accompanied by any specific imagery, they were just there in the ether, trying to overwhelm their senses.

"Pull back your Force sense as much is possible," Fay ordered, gritting her teeth as they all reeled under the assault.

Now within the system, the effect was far, far greater than she had felt in hyperspace. Quinlan in particular looked as if he was fighting himself. His hands were clenching and unclenching, his teeth grinding, and his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Harry and Aayla had it slightly easier than the others, their shields reinforcing one another's, but even they were reeling slightly.

"Do not give into it. Do not let any of those emotions in, good or bad, light or dark. They are not yours. Do not let them affect you!" Lily said, her voice a mantra, almost, which the others used to latch onto before reinforcing their mental defenses as much as they could. This helped somewhat, but it was like standing on top of a dam as a tsunami hit. While it was still battering your senses you were in no danger so long as the dam stood, but you knew it could break at any moment.

Lily too was shuddering, the feelings and emotions hitting her despite her not actually having a physical brain for them to target. "This is not fun," Lily muttered. "This is not fun at all."

Harry and Aayla exchanged a glance, communing silently, before Aayla spoke for them both, looking at her master. "If anyone needs to rest, we can pull you behind our mental shields for a bit."

The older man hesitated, but nodded. The two lovers had developed a certain ability with that over the past few years: being able to temporarily join their minds to the other Jedi, bringing them into their mental planes as they had Alecto during the battle against the Horde. Here, that would actually allow the Jedi to rest the themselves mentally. It would put somewhat more of a strain on the two of them, but the two of them were withstanding this mental choas better than anyone else, even Master Fay.

"I'll take you up on that at some point, I think," Quinlan said with a smile at his padawan.

"Harry, give us something to concentrate on," Lily ordered. "Tell us what's on the sensors, someone. And Fay or Micah, you tell us about the history of the place." They had, of course, all heard about the New Sith Wars and what had occurred here, but it would allow them to concentrate on something real for a time until they got used to the new mental strain.

"Sensors indicate some plant life, but not a lot. Most of the planet is arid; the seas have receded dramatically," Harry reported as the giant ship moved through the space lanes of the dead world. "The plant life is mostly concentrated around a few equatorial regions. The southern hemisphere is dominated by a series of giant mountain ranges with scattered plant life, though not a lot. The northern hemisphere has a few scattered craters and what might have been settlements. Nothing in orbit, of course, but I can see some signs of nomads out there. Humans maybe, but definitely not a large population. Um… There could be something else there, but our scanners aren't good enough for me to tell."

"That matches with what we expected," Lily said, looking over Master Fay.

Fay nodded, then elaborated. "We know the planet was inhabited at one point after the war by non-Force sensitives. But when the hyperspace lanes began to disappear, the planet was evacuated."

"What are we looking for exactly, do you think?" Harry asked. Having pulled in his Force senses, he could no longer tell what they were supposed to be doing here. He knew that they were here to find him a lightsaber crystal, but how, and why here, of all places, eluded him.

"That is up to you, Harry," Master Fay said firmly. She gestured him over to her, and then to kneel in front of her as she put her hands on his shoulders. Lily swiftly joined her, her ethereal hands resting on either side of Harry's temples from behind, cold, yet immensely reassuring. "Reach out with the Force, Harry. Tell us where we are supposed to go."

"Okay…" Harry said, breathing in deeply. He looked over at Aayla, who quickly joined them, taking one of his hands in hers. These physical connections would work as a lifeline like Lily's earlier mantra as he sent his astral projection out into the Force.

It was like diving into a whirlpool. Harry had to fight to keep his mental projection in one piece. Trying to find a single string of light which would point him to where he had to go in the torrent of the shadow of memory made it even worse.

"It, it's called the Valley of the Jedi," he said aloud, his face strained, his knuckles white-streaked as one hand gripped Fay's hand and the other gripped Aayla's. "The Valley of the Jedi. It is a name that I am seeing, a place. A deep valley marked with statues of some kind. S, south somewhere on the southernmost hemisphere."

"That's enough, Harry. Come back to us," Lily ordered, her ethereal hands still on his temples. Fay and Aayla did the same with their free hands, their hands overlapping on his face. "Come back, Harry."

With their touch Harry was able to pull his consciousness back, and he almost physically felt the snap of Aayla's shields coming up around his mind as his projected self merged with the rest. He sagged against Master Fay's legs and felt Aayla's arms going around him. "By the Light, that was… Oooh wee, that was really tough!"

"Indeed, but it told me much," Master Fay said, running one hand through Harry's hair. "I think I know what we are here for, and it is not just to find you some lightsaber crystals, Harry."

"No," Harry said with a nod, while Aayla stiffened beside him, feeling the words before he said it, going through what he had felt out there and coming to the same conclusion. "It isn't. Those thoughts, those emotions we're feeling. They aren't just echoes of what those caught in the Thought Bomb were feeling when it went off."

"What do you mean?" Quinlan asked intently, while Alecto and Micah also frowned.

"They're actual psyches. I think both Jedi and Sith ghosts are trapped here, unable to pass on," Harry said, his voice ringing with certainty.

"You mean to say…that the Thought Bomb trapped them here," Giiett said slowly, his voice showing his horror at the idea quite clearly. "That both sides of that conflict have been trapped here for one thousand years? Why didn't the High Council try to free them before the nebula closed this place off from the rest of the galaxy?"

"I have no idea," Master Fay said tiredly. "I may be old, but I'm not that old! The only Jedi who was around back then who is still with us is Master Yoda, and even he was but a newly made padawan at the time, certainly not privy to the workings of the High Council."

"Maybe they couldn't. I mean, we all know that a lot of the ancient abilities of Jedi were lost around that time, right? And the best and brightest of the Jedi, both the High Council and the Jedi Lords, were part of the battle on Ruusan. Maybe no one survived who knew how to free them," Aayla said.

"Or maybe they thought the Thought Bomb was too dangerous," Alecto said. They looked at him, and the Duros snorted. "Maybe trying to research the after effects was too dangerous for any of them. Who among the Jedi Order even knew how to defend themselves like we can with Occlumency? The Jedi Order teaches us to be open and to send our thoughts out to filter through the Force for information, not to defend ourselves from it."

"That is a distinct possibility," Micah said with a nod. "Indeed, it makes too much sense for us to ignore."

"So… Will we be able to do it?" Quinlan asked, looking both determined and yet wary of the coming task. "After all, there are Sith minds out there, just as many as Jedi minds."

"I don't know," Lily said thoughtfully. "There were a few spells back in my and Harry's home dimension to exorcise ghosts. But they often failed depending on the power of the ghost or the individual doing the spell. I am uncertain if those kind of spells would even work in this dimension; we've never tried them before, after all. And these are Jedi. Their connection to the Force will be much more powerful than most ghosts I could think of."

Master Fay frowned thoughtfully, working it out in her head, but Harry was the first one to speak. "Their entrapment will be in two parts," he said, his voice still grimly certain. Next to him Aayla was still working through what he had sensed out there, but she still nodded agreement. "I felt it in the Force. There is a central hub, almost, something physical which is part of what keeping them here. Destroy that, and exorcising the various spirits will be possible."

"But if we do that, each spirit, I think, will need to be dealt with in turn," Aayla said, speaking up now, having reached her own conclusions from what Harry had sensed. "If we take out that physical thing, the spirits will gain in power."

"A mental fight, then," Quinlan said with distaste. "I'll admit that doesn't sound pleasant," he said, his irony and deadpan tone rather withering.

"Well, we won't be finding out anything more up here," Harry said philosophically. "Should we leave someone up here to guard the ship?"

"No," Fay replied. "There is no physical threat to us here. There's no sign of anything in space. The human's population seems to be preindustrial and nomadic at this point, and what I am sensing down there in terms of other species seem to be friendly enough."

"Those, what are they called again? The ones who look like furry balloons?" Harry asked.

"Bouncers, dear," Fay replied almost absentmindedly. "And yes, they are here. I feel as if they have been waiting for us for a long time. There is a sense of welcome there, buried beneath the rest of the Force miasma of this planet."

The other Jedi took turns to reach out, with Quinlan being the only one who didn't, fearing the effect it would have on his mental defenses. One after another the others all nodded, having felt the same thing.

"It will be fascinating to meet them, I think," Fay said. "An entire species of telepaths."

Harry and Aayla led the way, communing telepathically as was there wont. "You do know that the majority of this fight will probably fall on you, Harry?" Aayla said. "You're the reason we're here, after all. This is supposed to be your…your trial, I think." The words were sent without rancor. After all, Aayla was precisely where she would want to be, but there was no use hiding the fact that they were here because of Harry.

"I know," Harry said with a sigh. "But there's nothing for it. We'll just have to do the best we can like always. Together?"

"Like always, together!" Aayla said, squeezing his hand and sending a rush of love down their link, almost tempted to pull him into her mind completely for a moment to give him a more quasi-physical response to that statement, but not doing so. They tended to lose track of time in the real world when they did that kind of thing.

Moments later the Jedi headed down in their various starships as Master Fay directed them to a spot on the southern hemisphere where she felt the Bouncers were congregating to welcome them. The ships touched down, one after another, the Jedi getting out of them to look at the Bouncers as they approached. Master Fay stood forward, her hand raised in welcome as the other Jedi did the same.

The Bouncers were very odd to look at and even more odd to think about in terms of being sentient. Because, as Harry had said, they looked like large balloons covered with green hair. Their eyes were dark and luminous, indicating their nocturnal heritage. They had tentacles falling from their bodies which ended in spade like ends. Several of them were using these as feet to stand there as they watched the Jedi move towards them, while others were moving around through the air, these tentacles floating behind them like tails. Their only other features were little flaps on the sides of their main balloon-like bodies, which seemed to move and sway with them, aiding them in controlling where they went through the air. They had no mouths, but instead multiple small creases around their faces and nose which showed what limited change of mood or emotion they conveyed physically rather than mentally.

"Greetings, Jedi," said one of them, his telepathic voice echoing into Master Fay's mind. "Fascinating. Your friends are closed to us somehow. We understand the reasoning, but if we could, we would speak with all."

"A moment please, good Bouncer," Master Fay said, turning to her fellows and indicating that they needed to open small holes in their defenses to allow the Bouncers to communicate.

Once that was done she turned back, and the Bouncers addressed them all. "Greetings, Light Sided ones. We have heard of your coming through our dreams. We dreamed a Jedi would come to free the souls trapped here so they could resume their journey to eternity. Many centuries they have been caught here, unable to leave, unable to go to their rest."

"We understand. We have felt this problem through the Force. And we wish to do what we can to aid them," Harry said, stepping forward to join his master. Aayla and the others did as well, the Jedi forming a line with Lily floating between Master Fay and Harry. "But these spirits, even the Light Sided ones, are out of control. We feel them pushing in on us from all sides here. Can you help us get to the Valley quickly?"

"We can," the Bouncer replied. "We know where it is. We can take you to it. But you must agree to something first. You must free all the spirits, Dark Side and Light Side both. There must be balance. We will not help you if you only seek to free the Light Side apparitions."

"We will attempt to, but we cannot promise to free them all. We are here to make the attempt, but the future beyond this point is blocked to me," Fay said. "And I am the best at seeing the future of all of us here. If you can see more clearly, that could help us."

"Your attempt is all anyone could ask. Certainty is for the young and the foolish," one of the Bouncers said. His green hair was noticeably marked with white, here and there.

There was a sense of laughter from the others, and Harry grinned suddenly, feeling a little better for this conversation. The other Jedi felt that too and nodded at the Bouncers. "Lead the way, please."

As they walked the Jedi made small talk with the Bouncers. For some reason the telepathic communication with the locals helped to keep the emotions of this planet at bay. The Bouncers were somehow immune to it, and their telepathic communication gave the Jedi another anchor to their physical reality, further shielding them from the Force storm of emotions.

At least, that was what they thought, until one of the Bouncers burst their bubbles as darkness approached. "The spirits, they feel your presence. They know either their deliverance or damnation is at hand. They have pulled back and prepared for what is to come."

"That can be both good and bad," Harry said with a groan.

"It is both good and bad," the Bouncer said, no sense of irony or joke in it's mental tone. "Some will welcome it; some will attempt to cling to even this shadow of life. Others will attempt to take you over. I am sorry that we cannot help you further."

"You will have helped us enough if we can just get to the Valley. We sensed… Well, I sensed," Harry corrected himself sheepishly, "that there was a physical manifestation of the trap that the Jedi are in. Is that true?"

The Bouncers looked at one another, communicating amongst themselves, before a few of them replied. "Yes. There is a central orb, created during the Thought Bomb, which acts as the jail cell, almost, of the spirits. It will need to be destroyed before you can begin to dispel the spirits.

"But that too will be difficult. Others have tried, but only the Force can harm it at all."

"Well, in that case, at least the Light Side of the Force chose the right lance for this particular boil," Harry said dryly, causing his fellows to laugh.

With the Bouncers helping them it didn't take the group of Jedi very long to reach the Valley of the Jedi, with the Jedi using the Force to augment their bodies and the Bouncers simply bouncing around. Watching them move was just fun, Harry reflected, staring at a few of the smaller Bouncers. They were playing tag using little movements of their tentacles tails and ventrals to sweep around one another in an intricate dance even as they kept up with the rest of the group.

Soon, however, their simple enjoyment of the trip faded under the continuous battering assault from the despairing emotions of the Jedi and Sith trapped here. It wasn't quite a physical presence, but it certainly was battering at their mental senses.

More than once Harry and Aayla were asked to pull Alecto or Quinlan into their mental planes. Quinlan was not very comfortable with this and left almost as soon as he arrived. He simply wasn't comfortable with sharing all that he was like that. Alecto was better, having experienced it before during their battle gestalt. Micah and Master Fay needed no such help, and Lily, for all that she was fighting the feelings like they were, accompanied by a wind trying to push her away from them, persevered.

A bare few hours after they had started their journey from where they had landed, the Jedi and their guides reached their destination. The Valley in question was more of a gorge, in Harry's opinion, steep-sided and extremely rocky even at the entrance. But despite that, there was nothing really unusual about the site until you were so deep into the gorge that you had trouble seeing back the way you came. Then any visitor to the gorge ran into the statues.

These were massive monoliths, about three stories tall, carved into the living rock of the mountain that the gorge was set into. The Jedi noticed as they moved forward that each stature was different. One of them was wearing armor plate, another was dressed as a traditional Jedi, robe and all. Each of them had a replica of a lit lightsaber as part of the statue and were separated from their fellows by perhaps a yard or so of flat rock before the next statue began. As they continued onward, the statues slowly began to be almost pushed out of the rock, carved out, rather than carved into the stone. The effect was interesting: the further down into the valley you went, the more alive the statues seemed to appear.

"This is amazing," Master Fay said softly as they passed the third pair of statues. "I can almost recognize some of these from the Jedi archives. Their faces in particular are fantastically well-carved. Good Bouncer, who made these?"

"The denizens of this planet made them with the aid of a few non-force survivors of the Army of Light. It took them twenty years, and they could barely leave the planet before the nebulae closed in around us." The Bouncer paused, seemingly pensive for a moment, then moved closer to the two Masters in the lead. "Good Jedi, does your arrival mean that the nebula has settled down?"

"We're afraid not. It took us many years to get here, and even if we had simply traveled in it would've taken two or so. We will make better time leaving since once this Force anomaly is dealt with, that should carry over into the physical realm," Master Micah said, shrugging his shoulders. "We will have to see."

"Might I ask why you ask? I can sense you are both interested and concerned about the idea of Ruusan being connected to the galaxy at large once more," Master Fay asked gently.

The Bouncer was silent for a moment, then replied slowly. "Those who come from off world bring great wonder and sorrow in equal measure. Our world was changed greatly one thousand years ago. We are not certain if we would rather welcome the greater universe back, or would prefer to stay in our exile."

"Say, rather, isolation. You did not make this choice, good Bouncer," Harry said from behind the two Masters, interrupting them while using the same form of address that Master Fay had. After all, none of the Bouncers had given them their names, if they even had individual names. "If the rest of the universe does come back, it will be your choice to let them in. This is your planet, and if we have anything to say about it, any offworlder will respect that."

There was a feeling of a chuckle from the Bouncers. "You speak well and honestly, young Jedi, and yet you also speak arrogantly. Do you think you could truly speak for all of the offworlders?"

"No, but we could, at least, try," Alecto said, moving up with Aayla to stand with Harry in an almost automatic expression of support.

Again there was a chuckle, but the conversation tapered off at that point as they had reached the section where the statues truly seemed to be coming out of the rock. Between the final two statues there was a slight raised dais on top of which was a stone throne, the back of it gone.

On top of the throne hovered a massive crystal of silver. It was taller than Master Quinlan, who was the tallest of them by an inch over Harry, and wider than any two of the Jedi shoulder to shoulder. As they watched the surface of the orb shifted under the faint light coming in from above them. It looked almost as if something was inside it, and some pinkish and orange light glimmered from within.

The sight took the Jedi's breath away for more than one reason. It was gorgeous, but it was also both the center of the Force storm that they had been weathering since coming into the system, and was wrong. Fundamentally, completely, bizarrely wrong! The mere sight of the thing made all of the Jedi shiver, fear coming into even Master Fay's mind as they looked at it. "That, that hast to be the physical sign of the spirits' subjugation."

"That is the Thought Bomb itself, I would wager," Master Fay said, frowning in something approaching anger. For Fay, this was a sign of something closer to fury than any of the others had ever seen her show before.

"How do we do this?" Harry asked intently, his fingers flexing violently. "Do we just launch Bombarda techniques at it? Just shatter the thing? Do we have to be in physical contact with it?"

"I would not recommend that," one of the Bouncers said, his telepathic voice somehow dry. "When the statues were being carved, several workers attempted to touch that orb. Their reasons are not known to me, of course. I was not around at the time. All of them died. Their bodies were taken away by their fellows, but none ever dared to touch it again."

"And the Jedi at the time could not deal with it," Master Fay said. "That points to the need for the techniques you and Harry have introduced, Lily."

"Agreed," Lily said, frowning in thought as she moved ahead of the others, floating in the air a few feet away from the orb. "I wonder if I could touch it."

"No!" Harry exclaimed along with Fay. "We have no idea what would happen, mom. You might be sucked into the thing for all we know!"

"It was just a thought, dear," Lily said, scowling and turning her head away so that neither of the others could see it. After all these years Lily was rather used to being a ghost, but that didn't mean that it had become any easier to see her son in danger while she simply stood by, unable to help. Admittedly, she had discovered ways to do so, as had been shown against the Horde. But she still had a tendency to want to protect him physically.

"I believe Bombarda techniques. Yes, our most destructive pure Force techniques. I doubt that anything with a physical component will be effective here," Master Fay said, gesturing for Lily to join them as they all backed away. "Form a circle around it; attack from all sides."

"That sounded surprisingly martial for you, Master Fay," Micah said in an effort to alleviate the gravity of the situation.

The quip fell somewhat flat, but everyone still smiled, moving around the thing. Lily joined them in the circle, hovering between Harry and Aayla, with Master Fay on his other side. To Fay's other side sat Alecto, then Master Giiett, then Knight Vos who sat next to Aayla on her other side. As one the Jedi lifted their hands, holding them out towards the Thought Bomb.

The techniques lashed out, crashing into the silver orb from every direction. As the Jedi poured their will power into their techniques, the silver seemed to shimmer, trying to take in their power but failing, the shape of that power thwarting its ability to absorb the Force. Minutes into their attack, the silver of the thing began to crack, then crumble away into what looked like dust, the light within flickering and becoming more and more visible.

Suddenly there was a cacophonous roar as the orb seemed to give up the ghost, shattering into a thousand pieces, each of them dissolving into nothing, releasing the energy within. That energy was only barely felt on the physical plane, but in the Force it reverberated, and the Jedi staggered back as if they had been hammered by a tornado. At the same time, all of them could feel a vast susurration in the Force as the spirits within the Thought Bomb were released from the physical trap which had contained them within.

Most of the spirits moved on in that moment. Harry realized with a jolt that the spirits, both Sith and Jedi, who had passed on had understood the great answer to all wars: that in the end the dead are all the same, and the only winners are the crows.

Wiser by far than their former lords and masters, then, Harry thought sardonically. He could feel that the vast majority of the Jedi passed on then, leaving only those who had an ax to grind, or had, perhaps, been driven mad in the centuries trapped with their Sith adversaries in the Thought Bomb. But there were over a dozen, perhaps more like two dozen, Dark Side ghosts in the ether around them.

"That was perhaps the easiest part," Master Fay said after the physical repercussions had faded. "Now comes the difficult part of exorcising the remaining spirits." She looked around at the other Jedi seriously. If she had thought for a moment that she could do this alone or even with just Master Micah, she would probably have ordered the others to leave at this point. But feeling the power reverberating in the Force around them, she knew that would be impossible.

And better to risk them now then to risk those spirits remaining here. Besides, this is Harry's task for some reason. His techniques allowed us to destroy the remnants of the Thought Bomb, and I think his and Aayla's bond will allow the two of them, at least, to deal with the remainder.

"We might as well get comfortable, then," Harry said, thinking for a moment before gesturing around the circle of Jedi. Chairs appeared there, simple affairs, but comfortable enough.

They all sat down before looking at Master Fay. "The Force be with us," she said simply, pulling her legs underneath her as she began to meditate to send her consciousness out into the Force to do battle with the remaining spirits.

The others followed her example, Harry and Aayla sending a final 'I love you' to one another before concentrating and sending out their thoughts into the Force at large. As Master Fay had known, this acted like a lightning rod attracting all of the remaining spirits to them. And all the spirits who had refused to rejoin the Force attacked them, Jedi and Sith both.

Harry found himself elsewhere, the Valley gone, or perhaps its time rewound to a thousand years ago. The sky above was red, casting shadows from the rock faces all around, but the walls of the valley were far wider and less sharply defined. So this is some kind of mental plane, then? Or the land between the living and the dead?

Behind him Harry could feel his connection to Aayla, like a bridge coming out of his back into the sky and beyond. Unblemished and perfect, it shimmered with pure platinum light, helping Harry to center himself.

Around him, Harry could feel the personalities of the trapped Jedi and Sith coalescing, preparing to strike. Here this was represented to him by a heavy cloud bank of some kind appearing all around him, obscuring everything.

Before they could attack, Aayla appeared there too, her mental representation stepping out of midair and landing lightly on her feet next to Harry. For some reason their connection was still there in the sky, heading off somewhere from her back just as did Harry's. "So our main minds, I suppose you could say, are still back there somewhere on the physical plane. But we shouldn't be complacent," Harry warned via their link.

Aayla nodded, then, to their great shock, Lily appeared there as well. She too was connected to Harry by a thin, almost invisible thread. Here, however, her body looked to be actually solid, her body dressed like a Jedi Master's for some reason, rather than the clothing she had been murdered in. "My, but this is a surprise, though a pleasant one," Lily said, showing a true British woman's mastery of understatement.

She smiled then, looking down at herself and then to her son, reaching to clasp his body to her and leaning in to kiss his forehead. For only the second time in his entire life Harry felt his genetic mother's physical touch, and he trembled slightly as he hugged her tightly.

A moment later, however, Aayla sent him a nonverbal warning, and the two Potters shifted their attention elsewhere. The two Jedi padawans moved back to back, their lightsabers coming out. Harry's was still the green-bladed lightsaber that Quinlan had taken from Aurra Sing. But both of them waited to activate them, staring out into the mist surrounding them.

There was a vast push towards them, and the mist coalesced into a few individuals, while the rest of the mist simply boiled forward. Realizing somehow that the mist itself was also a threat, Lily raced forward, her hands outstretched. The air around her hands reacted to Lily's will slamming the mist away. As it did, ghost-like figures, tortured faces of dozens of people representing almost as many races, appeared there, wailing and trying to get around the mother bear. "You will not have them! You will not have my children, you bastards!" Lily roared into their teeth, her hands flaring with the Force as she struck out at them.

This left Harry and Aayla to deal with five attackers whose sense of self was still strong enough to allow them to form physical bodies here in the realm between the living and the dead. Three of them were Sith, their lightsabers blazing red as they moved to attack the two Jedi from one side. The other two were Jedi, and they too moved to attack the two padawans from the other side of their former adversaries.

"Is it just me, or is there something wrong with the fact that all of you are attacking us rather than one another?" Harry asked sardonically, his voice carrying to both Sith and Jedi.

"Foolish boy!" spat one of the Sith, standing forward slightly from his fellows. His skin was reddish, a little darker, maybe, then their friend Zule's. He had long, black hair down to his shoulders, lanky and unkempt, framing an angular face that might once have been handsome. However, the face was dominated by eyes of pure yellow, and a rictus of madness had set into his sneer.

"The Jedi spirits might think themselves free, but they are not!" the man continued. "They are subservient to me! They cannot see myself or my Sith brethren; all they can see are you, and you have flaws enough to infuriate any right thinking Jedi."

"Yeah, I call bullshit on that one," Harry said, cracking his neck explosively as he activated his lightsaber. "Still, it makes my job a little easier."

But to his surprise the man who had spoken was not the one to attack first. That dubious honor went to the man next to him. He was taller than the first man and powerfully built, reminding Harry strongly of Master Glaive. He also wielded a longer than average lightsaber with a thicker than average plasma blade, for all the universe like the lightsaber equivalent of a claymore.

"RAAAHHHH!" With that wordless roar the man attacked, his eyes pure yellow with reddish irises to them, the sign of a berserker. Harry met him with a flash of his lightsaber followed by a Force Push that hurled him away. He then had to to duck, covering himself with Force Shield as the third Sith attacked him while behind him the two Jedi swiftly engaged Aayla, separating the two padawans for a moment. Their bond here was not nearly as close as it was in the real world for some reason, forcing them to fall back

The third Sith was a woman. She had dark skin, the color of light mocha. Her hair fell to her shoulders in a cascade of black ringlets, and she had full, pouting red lips. She also a small tattoo of some kind on one cheek, but rather than take away from her beauty, it gave her a darkly sensual appearance, adding to the effect of her lips and her deep brown and yellow eyes. Those eyes were the only ones of the three facing Harry that were not pure yellow, the sign of someone who had completely fallen to the Dark Side.

She was also using a light whip, a whip made of reddish plasma. As it crashed against his Force Shield, Harry leaped away so that he could face all three of them without turning his body. "That's new and is giving me some very, very bad mental images," Harry said impishly, staring at the woman.

"What's the matter, boy?" she asked, whipping the light whip around her in a show of significant skill. "Don't think you're man enough?"

"I think my bond mate would object if I said anything beyond 'no comment.'" Harry replied. He then watched as her eyes narrowed, suddenly glinting with more yellow than before. Then they all attacked as one.

"Aren't you lot going to even give me your names?" Harry asked while conjuring up a more powerful Force Shield, keeping them all back for a moment as he studied them in turn. However, he had never seen any faces in the histories he'd read which covered the New Sith Wars, and even their weapons were not really helping him figure out who was who here.

"I am Lord Skere Kaan, boy!" the first man said, stepping back slightly and raising his rather normal looking lightsaber in comparison to the other two in a classic Ataru stance. "You have some very interesting tricks, and you are powerful. More powerful than even the other two Masters I sensed with you. Your body will serve me far better than theirs could have once I excise your spirit from it."

"Ah, well, it's nice to know the stakes!" Harry replied, wincing internally as he realized he was facing the man who had led the Brotherhood of Darkness, the man who had betrayed the Jedi High Council to become a Sith, gathering most of the Sith alive during the New Sith Wars under one banner. Not good.

With that in mind Harry stopped taunting them and went on the attack. Bombarda spells lashed out at the feet and faces of the woman and the larger man as he rushed to engage Lord Kaan in a lightsaber duel, or so Kaan thought. Before they clashed, however, Harry teleported away, flashing a fireball towards the man. At the same time he tried to conjure up small stone needles and knives, but the technique fizzled, the images in his mind not superimposing themselves on the reality around them.

Realizing what that meant, Harry turned, roaring mentally as he engaged the larger Sith blade to blade, pitting his Djem So against the other man's for a brief second before popping away once more. "Aayla! Transfiguration and conjuration doesn't work here!"

This timely warning saved Aayla's life as she had been about to conjure up a stone wall to slow down the Jedi facing her. Instead she switched her spell to a Force Shield of some strength, watching as the blade of one Jedi impacted it, bouncing off and away. A blast of air caught him and hurled him backwards mid leap, his Ataru style having opened himself up to that before he could realize it.

"You are no Jedi! You feel love; you let your emotions rule you. There is no passion, there is serenity. You are not worthy of being a Jedi!" said one of them as she circled Aayla to the left. She was a Bothan wielding twin lightsabers like Aayla's, only the longer, normal variety rather than her short shotos.

The two of them exchanged a swirling dance of Ataru for a few moments before the other Jedi came back, striking at Aayla's back. He was surprised when she conjured a Force Shield once more to block the blow, twisting around his attack as it dissipated. He barely got out of the way of her riposte. This Jedi was a Miraluka man. However after that near brush with death (or whatever the equivalent was here), he seemed to gather himself, bringing up his lightsaber to block a flurry of blows while she sent a blast of wind towards the Bothan woman. "Hang on, Harry!"

"Even now you show your divided loyalties," said the Miraluka man, shaking his head. "How far have the Jedi fallen from our time to allow someone like you and this Harry to have that bond. It will lead to darkness! There is no emotion, there is serenity! We did not sacrifice ourselves so that more Jedi could fall to the Dark Side by allowing for soft emotions."

"How can you be so certain I will fall to the Dark?" Aayla said, bringing her lightsabers up in a Soresu stance for a moment while she tried to get through to the two Jedi with her words. "Harry and I might've bonded accidentally when we were younger, but neither of us has ever regretted it." She paused, then added, "Well, except for when we were going through puberty."

"You revel in your bond, which has become more important to you than the very Force we as Jedi are meant to serve!" the Bothan retorted, attacking even more furiously. But she couldn't get through Aayla's defenses. Aided by Force Shields and Air Blasts of significant strength, the padawan was holding her own against both Jedi Masters with an ease which would have been impossible in their own time. She hadn't even used the Bombarda technique yet, waiting for it when it would be most effective.

"Every time a Jedi has allowed his emotions to rule him in any way they have fallen to the Dark," said the Miraluka, almost sounding sorrowful as he, too, attacked. "We are not doing this out of petty mindedness or a false understanding of the ways of the Force. We are trying to save you from a fate you cannot truly comprehend. The Force is a harsh mistress. It demands balance and control."

"Control, yes, but not unfeeling control!" Aayla countered, using some of the same arguments she and Harry had used numerous times before. Gah, even ghosts want to give us a piece of their minds about our bond. "If you feel nothing, if you banish emotions away into the Force because you do not understand emotions, when they come upon you suddenly, of course you will overreact, of course you will give into the darker emotions. Because you have nothing to combat them!"

"Sophistry!" Bothan woman said, attacking all the more furiously. Aayla could feel her Force Shields dimming in strength as the fight went on, dozens, hundreds of flashing lightsaber blows exchanged in this place beyond time.

But that idea gave Aayla a clue as to another weapon at her disposal. If this place really is part of the Force, then I should be able to share my memories here with these two like if we were in a pensieve.

Reaching forward and within at the same time with the Force, Aayla thrust out the memory of her and Harry's discussion with the High Council, followed swiftly by what Harry had protected her from in Jabba's palace. As the memory reached its critical moment, she flashed out a blast of Force Light at the Miraluka male, blinding him and sending him reeling backwards. She wasn't nearly as good at using Force Light as Harry was, but she could at least conjure it into being for a short amount of time.

"I am of the Light!" she said as Harry's memory did the same. "Can you still say the same? When you look down on me for what I have done, for what I feel, for loving, caring, for being alive! If you cannot feel, if you cannot understand that being emotionless is not serenity, are you truly alive? Do you truly serve the Force like that, or just the balance? And which is closer to the Dark Side, the ones who stand on the balance point, or in the Light?"

The Bothan woman stared at her, then down at her own lightsabers, deactivating them as true lucidity returned to her face, her fur falling flat to her body from where it had risen. She looked into Aayla's eyes and nodded a silent affirmation. "Do it."

Aayla struck then, her lightsaber flicking out almost gently to decapitate the spirit.

In that moment the woman had realized that she was indeed serving the Dark Side, regardless of what she thought she had been doing a moment before. And in death came release. "Thank you," the spirit whispered as it slowly disappeared to join several of the unformed spirits who Lily had already banished.

That left Aayla facing off with the male Miralukan. This Jedi seemed more caught up in his own diatribe and had simply ignored the vision that Aayla had shared. Moreover, he now attacked using some of the same techniques Aayla had been while utilizing more Force Pushes, and his Force Precognition had become stronger too.

This is going to take a while, Aayla thought, glaring at the man even as she heard the fight around Harry beginning to escalate.