Exar Kun was a very influential Sith and a favorite one of mine. He is definitely deserving of a respect thread. 
 
As with other EU respect threads, however, this will be different in that comics are not the only source material for Star Wars. To represent Kun's capabilities, I will be posting plenty of comic scans but also quoting novels, sourcebooks, handbooks, etc. For those of you who are hazy on Star Wars knowledge, let me explain a few things first.  
 
1. Just in case this needs to be said, EU is Expanded Universe. Basically, EU Star Wars is all information and material separate from the movies as well as the movies themselves. This includes TV shows, comics, novels, video games, etc.
2. The Star Wars canon classes will be brought up in this thread at least a few times. So, to follow the terms I use and just to clarify, in Star Wars continuity, there are five canon classes.

• G-Canon- (George Lucas Canon). This is the highest canon class. It includes only the movies and material pertaining to them.
  
• T-Canon- (Television Canon). This is the second highest canon class and includes any information provided in TV shows. This includes Star Wars The Clone Wars, as an example.
  
• C-Canon- (Continuity Canon). This is the basic canon. This includes everything else that is confirmed to be in continuity, i.e., novels, comics, sourcebooks/handbooks, video games, etc.
  
• S-Canon- (Secondary Canon). This is essentially any information that has yet to be confirmed as canon. It should only be mentioned in the context that there is a chance a given piece of information could be non-canon.
  
• N-Canon- (Non Canon). Self-explanatory.

Powers

With his mind he reached across the galaxy and detected other users of Sith magic in the Empress Teta system.

An extremely powerful figure now, Kun dabbled in dark side alchemy, creating freakish two-headed avians and hulking terentateks that thirsted after Force-rich blood. He invented a glowing golden sphere that trapped the children of the Massassi and allowed him to feed off their energies. 

During Ulic's sentencing, the doors crashed open and Exar Kun strode in, flanked by bestial Massassi bodyguards. Before the whole assembly, the new Dark Lord of the Sith used his powers to hypnotize the observers and manipulate the president of the senate. 

Dueling

Intelligence/Prep

Exar Kun had also constructed a Sith superweapon, the Dark Reaper, that was capable of drawing in the life energies of thousands of combatants. Ulic unleashed the Dark Reaper against hundreds of Republic troops on the outpost of Raxus Prime.

Exar Kun/JA

Powers

Exar Kun himself possessed a great many other dark powers that he was unable to harness without the energy he needed to fuel his disembodied will.

Yavin 4, it turned out, had been the seat of power of a formidable Dark Lord of the Sith, a fallen Jedi known as Exar Kun. He had been seduced to the dark side when he studied the ways of the Sith and incorporated their magics into his manipulation of the Force. He had come to Yavin 4 and had enslaved the Massassi people. He used them to create all the temples on the world to help focus his power.

Eventually, like a child tiring of a toy, he let me go. I slumped to my side and involuntarily flinched as his shade came to cover me. "Just because you never saw me affect the material world, it doesn't mean I couldn't. And even if it is something of an effort to do so, here, in my stronghold, it is a pleasure beyond your possible ken."

Exar Kun passed the millennia in uneasy slumber. For a moment, and only for a moment, he was roused partially from his stupor by the bright presence of a man strong in the Force. Slowly extending his feelers in the direction of the mysterious man, Kun discovered that one of his great temples was inhabited by a small band of armed humans. But before he could gather enough strength to reach out to top this energy source, the Force-user and his fellows departed, and Kun again lapsed into sleep.
A few scant years later, Kun is brought sharply awake by the arrival of not one or two, but a dozen humans blazing with the power he needed to live again. Eagerly but cautiously, Kun observes each arrival, probing for weaknesses and the power he needs to restore his lost reserves of energy. For a time, he is able to subside by feeding on their residual energy, but soon he will need worshippers if he is to grow more active. With a nucleus of followers to provide him energy-providing anger and fear, Kun will have enough power to escape his exile and take on human form. To his surprise, Kun recognizes the leader to be the same man who had visited Yavin Four years earlier, now much more powerful in the Force. Too powerful, for the moment, for Kun to tackle.
Kun finds Gantoris, strong-willed and impatient to learn, to be a more promising first candidate. He easily seduces Gantoris in the same manner that Nadd had seduced him—by promising forbidden knowledge and the truly powerful Jedi secrets Gantoris cannot wait to learn. Carefully building up and feeding on the anger of his first apprentice, Kun grows in power. Soon he feels confident to make an attempt to subvert Luke, knowing that if he can sway the teacher, the students will all follow. Kun, posing as Anakin Skywalker, appears to Luke and attempts to pull him toward the forbidden Sith teachings by tempting hi to use Sith power to seize control of the New Republic and destroy the Empire. Realizing that this shade is not that of his father, Luke rejects the offer.
Enraged and drained, Kun returns to Gantoris. Desperate for more energy, he goads Gantoris to new heights of anger by showing him the Eol Sha colonists dying on Dantooine. Gantoris is pushed too far, however, and turns on his Sith master. Realizing that Gantoris is no longer his, Kun utterly drains him to provide himself a reserve of energy to last until he can subvert more students.
Kun has just begun edging in on Streen when Kyp Durron arrives at the Jedi Academy. Kun immediately senses in the young man his ideal subject. Like Gantoris, Kyp is strong-willed and impatient to learn. Moreover, he is far more powerful than the Eol Sha leader, and young enough to be overconfident and naive.
Over a number of weeks, Kun slowly bends Kyp to his will, and begins to augment his power. He grows very powerful on Kyp's hate, and soon his hold on Kyp is so complete that he can send Kyp beyond the planet to do his will and still retain control over his subject. Ultimately, he has Kyp return to Yavin Four and helps him reclaim the Sun Crusher. He also bolsters Kyp's talents to allow him to defeat Luke and place him in a coma.

The sleep of a Jedi was rarely troubled by dreams. Pure rest brought about through concentration and meditation techniques left little room for disturbing thoughts or shadow plays. But this time nightmares did bread through to Luke Skywalker. A voice called him across a misty blank dreamscape. “Luke, Luke my son. You must hear me!”
A shadowy form rose out of the mists even as the surroundings began to sharpen. Luke saw himself in his pale-gray flightsuit, stained with sweat, grime, and pain—as he had looked when he took his father’s body from the second Death Star. The features on the spectral silhouette shimmered with a pale aura. Luke saw the firm face of Anakin Skywalker, restored from the ravages Darth Vader’s evil had worked on his body. 
“Father!” Luke called. His own voice had an odd, echoing quality, as if it bounced off the mists.
“Luke,” the image of Anakin said.
Luke felt tingling amazement surge through him. It was another sending, just like his contact from Obi-Wan Kenobi. But Obi-Wan had bid him farewell, claiming that he could never contact Luke again. “Father, why are you here?”
Anakin stood taller. His robes rippled in a rising wind that drove back the mists. Suddenly the world surrounding them was no longer featureless. Luke recognized that he and the image of his father stood atop the Great Temple on Yavin 4. The orange gas giant hung overhead, and the timeless jungles below looked unchanged. But the stories of the temple were white and new with bright scars from fresh quarrying. A sketchy framework of scaffolding laced one wall of the ziggurat. Far below, Luke heard mumbling and chanting, incantations from suffering slaves. He saw people of the vanished Massassi race laboring together, straining to haul enormous stone blocks along roads they had chopped through the jungle. The grayish-green Massassi were humanoid, smooth-skinned, with large lanternlike eyes. Anakin Skywalker stood on the highest point of the temple, as if directing the work gangs below. 
“Do not be deceived, Luke. Do not trust everything you think to be the truth.” Anakin’s words carried an odd, distant lilt, like the faint accent of an ancient race. “Obi-Wan lied to you, more than once.”
Luke felt uneasiness well up within him. No matter how much he loved Obi-Wan Kenobi, he knew the old manhad not always been completely forthcoming with him. “Yes, I know he hid the truth from me. He told me Darth Vader had killed you, when you had really become Vader.”
Anakin turned from the illusionary Massassi laborers below. He met Luke’s gaze with eyes as bottomless as the universe itself. “Was that the only lie Obi-Wan told you?”
“No. He hid other things from me.” Luke looked off into the jungled distance, toward the moon’s foreshortened horizon to see another clearing, another tall temple being created. 
“And Obi-Wan rationalized it as being for your own protection. Did you ask for such protection, Luke?”
“No.” Luke tried to fight back his uneasiness. 
“Obi-Wan wanted you to be his student, but he wouldn’t allow you the freedom to make your own decisions. Did he trust you so little? Did you always agree with his ‘certain point of view’?”
“No,” Luke said, feeling the words swallowed up in a doubt.
Anakin’s voice became tinged with anger. “Obi-Wan fought against the complex Sith teachings I had uncovered. He did not understand them himself, but he forbade me to study them—though he always insisted that I must learn for myself and choose my own path. I rebelled against him for his narrow-mindedness, and I insisted on unlocking secrets for which I was not ready. In the end it consumed me—I fell to the dark side, and I became the Dark Lord of the Sith.”Anakin looked at Luke with an anguished, apologetic expression. “But if Obi-Wan had let me learn the teachings at my own pace, I would have grown stronger. I would have remained uncorrupted. He never understood that.” Anakin’s image shook his head. “If you are going to teach other Jedi, Luke, you must understand the consequences of what they may learn. You, too, must study the heritage of the Sith. It is a part of your Jedi training.”
Luke swallowed. “I’m afraid to believe you, Father. I have already felt the power of the dark side.” Below the Massassi labor crews hummed and sang in stuporous unison, far beyond exhaustion, as they hauled an enormous block up a mud-covered ramp made of stripped logs. 
Atop the dream temple, the wavering image of Anakin Skywalker spoke more forcefully. “Yes, but the ways of the Sith can lead you to a stronger grasp of your own power. You can wipe out the last vestiges of the pitiful Empire that continues to harass your New Republic. You can become more than a mere servant to a frail and corrupted government. You can administer the galaxy yourself as a benevolent ruler. You deserve it more than any other person, Luke. You can control everything, if you use the Force as your tool, instead of allowing yourself to become its servant.”
Luke stiffened, unable to believe what his father was saying. Then he noticed that with the rising passion in his voice, the image of Anakin Skywalker became less distinct, wavering until it transformed into only a black outline, an engulfing hooded form that sucked energy from the air. Slowly, Luke realized the truth. “You are not my father!” he shouted as the illusion began to crumble. “My father was a good man in the end, healed by the light side.”
Streaks of brilliant light flashed across the dreamscape sky of ancient Yavin 4. Below, Massassi slaves fled into the jungles in terror as the monumental temples crumbled under a barrage of laser blasts from orbit. Old Republic battleships had arrived, immolating the moon’s surface.
“Who are you?” Luke shouted at the figure through the roar of sudden blazing devastation around him. “Who?”
Instead, the hollow shadow laughed and laughed, ignoring the destruction that erupted from the construction sites—or amused by it. The Massassi temples exploded. The thick rain forests burst into flame. The dark man’s silhouette grew larger and larger, swallowing up the sky. Luke backed away from it, but his dream feet reached the edge of the imposing temple, and he stumbled backward, falling away, falling…

Surrounded by the thick stone walls of his quarters, Gantoris did not even attempt to sleep. He sat on his bunk dreading the arrival of the dark man from his nightmares. He fingered the lightsaber he had constructed, feeling its smooth cylinder, the rough spots where he had welded the pieces together, the buttons that would activate the energy blade. He wondered how he could use it against the ancient spectre who had taught him things that terrified him, things that Master Skywalker would never show his Jedi trainees.
“Do you mean to strike me down with that weapon?” the hollow voice said.
Gantoris whirled to see the oily, infinitely black silhouette ooze out of the massive stones in the wall. His impulse was to ignite his lightsaber and slash the violet-white blade across the dark form. But he restrained himself, knowing it would do no good. 
The shadow man laughed, then spoke with his antiquated accent. “Good! I am glad to see you have learned to respect me. Four thousand years ago the entire military fleet of the Old Republic and the combined forces of thousands of Jedi Masters could not destroy me. You would certainly be unable to do so alone.”
The dark man had shown him how to borrow energy from other living things, to shore up his own reserves. His mind was alert, but his nerves were frayed and his body exhausted. “What do you want with me?” Gantoris said. “You don’t just want to teach me.”
The shadow man agreed. “I want your anger, Gantoris. I want you to open the doorways of power. I am barred from the physical plane—but with enough other Sith followers, I could be at peace. I could even live again.”
“I won’t let you have my anger.” Gantoris swallowed, searching for a core of strength within himself. “A Jedi does not give in to anger. There is no passion; there is serenity.”
“Don’t quote platitudes to me!” the dark man said in a cold, vibrating voice. 
“There is no ignorance; there is knowledge,” Gantoris continued, repeating the Jedi Code. “There is no passion; there is serenity.”
The dark man laughed again. “Serentity? Let me show you what is happening at this moment. Do you recall the people you saved from Eol Sha? How happy you were o learn they had been taken to a place of safety, a paradise world? Observe.”
Inside the black cut-out form of the hooded man, an image appeared, displaying the grasslands of the planet Dantooine. The scene looked familiar to Gantoris after seeing the progress tapes delivered by Wedge Antilles. But now he saw Imperial lasers striking down, leveling the colony buildings, giant armored walkers striding across the savanna, blasting anything that moved, igniting the temporary living units. People ran screaming. His people. Gantoris recognized most of their faces, but before he could name them, they dissolved one by one in brilliant flashes as they tried to flee. The trees blazed in conical bonfires; black clumpy smoke rose in jagged swirls. 
“You lie! This is a trick!”
“I have no need of lies when the truth is so devastating. You can do nothing to stop it. Do you enjoy watching your people die? Does that not spark your anger? In your anger lies strength.”
Gantoris saw the old man Warton, whom he had known his entire life, standing in the middle of the holocaust. Warton stared around him, hands dangling at his sides, frozen in shock, until a thick green bolt cut him down.
“No!” Gantoris shouted. 
“Let loose your anger. Make me stronger.”
“No!” he repeated, turning his head away from the images of burned ruins and blackened bodies. 
“They are all dead. All of them,” the dark man taunted. “No survivors.”
Gantoris ignited his lightsaber and lunged at the dark man.
With an insistent bleeping Artoo-Detoo woke Luke from his nightmares. He snapped awake, using a Jedi technique to dispel the weariness and shock of his sudden waking.
“What is it, Artoo?”
The droid whistled, telling him something about a message waiting in the command center. Luke shrugged into his soft robe and hurried across the col floor in the early light of planetrise. Taking the turbolift down to the second level of the temple, he entered the once-bustling command center. “Artoo, bring up the lights.” He picked his path through the equipment, dust-covered chairs, shut-down computer consoles, document tables cluttered with debris. He powered on the communications station that Wedge had insisted on installing during his last supply run. 
The image of Han Solo waited impatiently for him, fidgeting in the holofield. When he saw Luke appear in the transmission locus, Han grinned up at him. “Hey, Luke! Sorry I forgot to account for time differential. Not even dawn there, is it?”
Luke brushed his brown hair into place with his fingers. “Even Jedi need to sleep sometime, Han.”
Han laughed. “Well, you’ll be getting less sleep when your new student arrives. I just wanted to tell you that Kyp Durron has had enough of his vacation. I think after all that time in spice mines, he got used to being miserable. The closest thing to the spice minds I could think of was your Jedi academy—that way he can work all day long, but at least he’ll be improving himself in the process.”
Luke smiled at his old friend. “I’d be honored to have him join us, Han. I’ve been waiting for him. He has the strongest potential of all the trainees I’ve seen so far.”
“Just wanted to let you know he’s coming,” Han said. “I’m trying to arrange for the next available transport to Yavin 4.”
Luke frowned. “Why don’t you just bring him in the Falcon?”
Han hung his head, looking extremely troubled. “Because I don’t own the Falcon anymore.”
“What?”
Han seemed filled with embarrassment, eager to end the communication. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll tell Leia hello for you and give the kids a hug.” 
“All right, Han, but—“
Han gave a sheepish grin and quickly terminated the transmission. Luke continued to stare at the blank space where Han’s image had been. First his nightmare of a dark man masquerading as Anakin Skywalker, and now the grim news that Han had lost the Millennium Falcon—
Luke heard a disturbance coming down the hall: clumsy footsteps slapping on the floor, panicked shouts. He looked up, ready to scold one of his students for such a blatant lack of control, when the cloned alien Dorsk 81 rushed into the control center. “Master Skywalker! You must come immediately!”
Luke sensed waves of horror and misery spilling from his candidate. “What is it?” he asked. “Use the calming techniques I showed you.”
But Dorsk 81 grabbed his arm. “This way!” The yellow-olive alien urged him out of the cluttered control room. Luke sensed widening ripples of alarm traveling like an earthquake through the solid stone of the temple. They ran along the flagstoned corridors, up the turbolift, and into the section of living quarters where the trainees made their homes. A sour, smoky stench filled the air, and Luke felt an icy lump in his stomach as he pushed cautiously forward. Hard-bitten Kam Solusar and addled Streen both stood outside the open doorway to Gantoris’s quarters, looking pasty and ill.
Luke hesitated for a fraction of a second, then moved through the doorway. Inside the small stone chamber, he saw what was left of Gantoris. The body lay crisped and blackened on the floor, burned from the inside out. Singed stains on the flagstones showed where he had thrashed about in the conflagration. Gantoris’s skin flake din black, peeling ashes over his powdery bones. Rising wisps of steam curled from the remaining fabric of his Jedi robe. On the floor the newly constructed lightsaber lay where Gantoris had dropped it, as if he had tried to fight something—and lost. 
Luke leaned against the cool stone wall to catch his balance. His vision blurred, but he could not tear his gaze from his dead student sprawled in front of him. By now the other eleven trainees had gathered. Luke grasped the worn stone bricks at the edge of the door until even the rounded corners bruised his fingers. He applied a Jedi calming technique three times before he felt confident enough to trust his voice. The words tasted like wet ash in his mouth, as Yoda had told him so long ago. “Beware the dark side,” he said.

Even in the deepest hours of night, Kyp did not sleep. He had eaten a bland but filling meal by himself, then retired to his cool quarters to meditate and practice the skills he had already learned. As he concentrated, with only a small glowlamp in the corner, he sent his mind out to feel between the cracks of all the stone blocks in the Great Temple. He followed the life cycles of the strands of moss. He tracked tiny arachnids skittering through the corridors and vanishing into dark spaces, where his delicate touch could follow them through the blackness into their hidden homes.
Kyp felt as if he had plugged into a network of living things that expanded his mind and made him feel both insignificant and infinite at the same time. As Kyp thought and dabbled with his fledgling abilities, he felt a great cold rip in the Force, like a black gash opening the structure of the universe. He snapped himself back to the present. 
Kype whirled and saw behind him the looming shadow of a tall cloaked figure. Even in the dim room the dark man’s silhouette seemed intensely black, a hole that swallowed up all glimmers of light. Kyp said nothing, but as he continued to gaze, he saw the tiny starpoints of distant suns within the outline of his mysterious visitor.
“The Force is strong in you, Kyp Durron,” the shadowy figure said.
Kyp looked up, feeling no fear. He had been imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Empire. He had lived in the pitch-dark spice mines of Kessel for over a decade. He had fought against a predatory energy spider. And he had flown through the black-hole cluster. As he looked at the imposing liquid-black outline, though, he felt awe and curiosity. 
“Who are you?” Kyp asked.
“I could be your teacher,” the dark man said. “I could show you many things that even your Master Skywalker does not comprehend.”
Kyp felt a thrill rush through him. “What things?”
“I could show you techniques that were lost thousands of years ago, secret rites and hidden doorways of power that no weak Jedi Master like Skywalker dares to touch. But you are strong, Kyp Durron. Do you dare to learn?”
Kyp felt reckless, but he trusted his instincts. They had served him well in the past. “I’m not afraid to learn,” he said, “but you have to tell me your name. I won’t learn from a man who is afraid to identify himself.”
Kyp felt foolish even as he said it. The shadowy man seemed to ripple as if with silent laughter. His voice boomed out again, full of pride. “I was the greatest Dark Lord of the Sith. I am Exar Kun.” 

Luke sealed his door, the first time he had ever locked it since returning to the abandoned temple. He held the Holocron in his palm and activated it, digging deep to seek information. “I wish to see Master Vodo-Siosk Baas,” he said.
The ghostly image of the nozzle-face, stunted Jedi Master rose out of the cube, robed and covered with bangles, leaning on a long gnarled stick. “I am the gatekeeper, I am Master Vodo-Siosk Baas,” the image said.
Luke squatted in front of the interactive holographic image. “I need information from you, Master Vodo. You were a Jedi during the time of the Great Sith War. You have told us about your student Exar Kun and how he created the Brotherhood of the Sith. You’ve told us that he fought for dominance over the other Jedi loyal to the New Republic.” Luke took a deep breath. “I need you to tell me more. How did Exar Kun fall at the end of the war? What happened to him? How did he die—or were you finally able to bring him back to the light side?”
“Exar Kun was my greatest student,” Master Vodo said, “yet he was corrupted. He was seduced by the powers available to him through studies of ancient Sith teachings.”
Luke nodded gravely. “I am afraid that the same thing might have happened to some of my own students, Master Vodo. Did Exar Kun ever return to the powers of good?”
“That was not to be,” the image of Master Vodo said. “Because I was his Master, I alone of the allied Jedi went to confront him, hoping that I could turn him back. I knew it was a foolish mission, but I had no choice. I had to try.”
“What happened?” Luke asked.
The image flickered, as if something had sparked inside the Holocron; then Master Vodo reappeared. “Exar Kun destroyed me. He slew his own master.”
Luke was suddenly jarred out of the story, remembering that the gatekeeper images in the Holocron were interactive simulacra with personalities imprinted upon them—not the real spirits of long-dead Jedi Masters. “Then what happened to Kun at the end of the Sith War?” Luke asked.
“All the Jedi banded together and came to the jungle moon in a united front against the Sith stronghold Exar Kun had built. The allied Jedi combined their powers into a massive annihilating strike.”
Master Vodo’s image flickered again, dissolved into static, then reassembled itself “…which obliterated the surviving Massassi natives and…” The image broke up, flickered, re-formed, then broke up again—as if something were jamming it.
“But Exar Kun—what happened to Exar Kun?” Luke demanded. He couldn’t understand what was going wrong with the Holocron. He shook the Holocron, tapped it a few times, then set it down on the flat, hard table and stepped back to get a better view of the holographic Jedi Master.
Inside the static-filled cube a dark knot appeared, like a storm gathered within its translucent walls. Master Vodo-Siosk Baas reappeared. “—but Kun was able to—“
Suddenly Master Vodo’s image shattered into a thousand glittering fragments of colored light, as if a greater force had torn it apart from within. The darkness inside the Holocron grew deeper and larger, swelling like a slow-motion explosion. Arcs of red fire struck out in all directions from the black fist. With a high-pitched shrieking noise of discharged energy, the faces of the cube split. The Holocron steamed as it collapsed with a shower of sparks, a stream of black curling smoke, and a stench of melted electronics and organic components.
Luke backed away, raising his hands to shield his eyes from the blaze. For a moment it seemed that a solid black hooded form like a walking silhouette rose up from the Holocron, laughing in a deep subsonic voice. Then it drifted away, dissipating into the stone walls. Luke felt cold fear grip him. The small white cube of the treasured Holocron lay in a melted lump on the table.

As the sphere of Yaving rose into the sky, Kyp lifted his arms, and the slick black fabric of his cape fell behind him. His hands were slender and small, the hands of a young man. But inside, power sizzled through his bones. “Exar Kun, help me,” Kyp said, closing his eyes.
He reached out with his mind, following the paths of the Force that led to every object in the universe, drawing power from the cosmic focal point of the Massassi temple. He searched, sending his thoughts like a probe deep into the storm systems of the gas giant. Behind him, Kype felt the black-ice power of Exar Kun arise, tapping into him and reinforcing his abilities. His own feeble exploratory touch suddenly plunged forward like a blaster bolt. Kyp felt larger, a part of the jungle moon, then a part of the entire planetary system, until he burrowed into the heart of the gas giant itself.
Pale orange clouds whipped past him. He sensed pressure increasing as he plummeted down, down to the incredibly dense layers near the core. He sought the tiny speck of machinery, a small, indestructible ship that had been cast away. When he reached the bottommost levels of the atmosphere, Kyp finally found the Sun Crusher. It stood out like a beacon, a bull’s-eye in the funneling field of lines of the Force. Size matters not, Master Skwalker had repeated. Kyp engulfed the Sun Crusher with his mind, surrounding it, touching it with his limitless, invisible hands. He thought about heaving it back up, dragging the Sun Crusher out of the depths of Yavin. But he discarded the thought. 
Instead, with the assistance of Exar Kun, he used his innate skill to power up the controls again, to move the control levers, push buttons to alter the course stored in the Sun Crusher’s memory, bringing it out of its entombment. Kyp continued to watch the weapon’s progress, focusing on the sphere of the enormous planet as it crested the misty treetops. The Sun Crusher appeared as a silvery dot, seeming no larger than an atom as it emerged from the highest cloud layers and streaked across space toward the emerald-green moon where Kyp waited.
He stared upward and waited, opening his arms to receive the indestructible weapon. The Sun Crusher approached like a long, sharp thorn of crystalline alloy, cruising upright on its long axis. The toroidal resonance-torpedo launcher hung at the bottom of the long hook. It looked beautiful. The Sun Crusher descended through the jungle moon’s atmosphere, straight down—like a spike to impale the Great Temple. Kyp controlled it, slowed its descent, until the superweapon hovered to a stop, suspended in front of him. 
As the sky brightened with planetrise, the alloy hull of the Sun Crusher seemed as pristine as a firefacet gem, scoured of all oxidation and debris by the intense temperatures and pressures at the core of Yavin. The Sun Crusher looked clean, and deadly, and ready for him.
“Thank you, Exar Kun,” Kyp whispered. 

The Sun Crusher hung suspended over the temple, still steaming in the morning air, resurrected from its tomb at the core of the gas giant. Kyp Durron spun around to stare at Luke, his black cape swirling with the rapid motion. Stunned, Luke reeled backward. “How dare you bring that weapon back!” he said. “It goes against all the Jedi knowledge I have taught you.”
Kyp laughed at him. “You haven’t taught me very much, Master Skywalker. I’ve learned a great deal beyond your feeble teachings. You pretend to be a great instructor, but you’re afraid to learn for yourself.” He looked back at the Sun Crusher. “I will do what must be done to eradicate the Empire. While I make the galaxy safe for everyone, you can stay here and practice your simple Jedi tricks. But they are no more than children’s games.”
“Kyp,” Luke said, keeping his voice even and taking a step toward him, “you’ve been lured by the dark side, but you must return. You were deceived and misled. Come back before its grip becomes too strong.” He swallowed. “I went over to the dark side once, and I came back. It can be done if you’re strong enough and brave enough. Are you?”
Kyp laughed in disbelief. “Skywalker, it’s embarrassing for me to listen to you talk. You are afraid to risk anything yourself, yet you want to call yourself a Jedi Master. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve stunted the training of your other Jedi candidates because of your own narrow-mindedness. Perhaps I should just defeat you here and now, and then I can take over their training.”
With trembling hands and a deep-seated dread in his heart, Luke reached to his side and wrapped his hand around the slick handle of his lightsaber. He pulled it free, igniting it with the familiar snap-hiss. The brilliant green blade extended, humming and ready for battle. A Jedi could not attack an unarmed opponent, could not resort to violence before all other avenues had been exhausted—but Luke knew the deadly potential of his most talented student. If Kyp had fallen to the dark side, he could become another Darth Vader. Perhaps even worse…
“Don’t make me do this,” Luke said, raising his lightsaber, but unsure what to do. He couldn’t just cut down his student, who stood unarmed at the top of the temple. But if he didn’t… “We have to send the Sun Crusher back,” Luke said. “At one time you yourself insisted that it should never be used.”
“I spoke out of ignorance,” Kyp said, “just as you do.”
“Don’t make me fight you,” Luke said in a low voice.
Kyp made a dismissive gesture with one hand, and a sudden wave of dark ripples splashed across the air like the shock front of a concussion grenade. Luke stumbled backward. The lightsaber turned cold in his hand. Frost crystals grew in feathery patterns around the handle. At the core of the brilliant green blade a shadow appeared, a black disease rotting away the purity of the beam. The humming blade sputtered, sounding like a sickly cough. The black taint rapidly grew stronger, swallowing up the green beam. With a frizzle of sparks Luke’s lightsaber died.
Trying to control his growing fear, Luke felt a sudden brush of cold behind him. He turned to see a black, hooded silhouette—the image that had impersonated Anakin Skywalker in Luke’s nightmare…the dark man who had lured Gantoris into a devastating loss of control.
Kyp’s voice came as if from a great distance. “At last, Master Skywalker, you can meet my mentor—Exar Kun.”
Luke dropped his useless lightsaber and crouched. His every muscle suddenly coiled and tensed. He rallied all the powers of the Force around him, seeking any defensive tactic. With the Sun Crusher looming behind him, Kyp stretched out both hands and blasted Luke with lightning bolts like black cracks in the Force. Dark tendrils rose up from the gaps in the temple flagstones, fanged, illusionary vipers that struck at him from all sides. Luke cried out and tried to strike back, but the shadows of Exar Kun joined the attack, adding more deadly force. The ancient Dark Lord of the Sith lashed out with waves of blackness, driving long icicles of frozen poison into Luke’s body. 
He thrashed, but felt helpless. To lose control to anger and desperation would be as great a failure as if he did nothing at all. Luke called upon the powers that Yoda and Obi-Wan had taught him—but everything he did, every skillful technique, failed utterly. Against the full might of Kyp Durron and the forbidden weapons of the long-dead spirit of Exar Kun, even a Jedi Master such as Luke Skywalker could not prevail. 
The black serpentlike tentacles of evil force struck at him again and again, filling his body with a pain like lava coursing through his veins. As he screamed, his voice was swallowed by a hurricane from the dark side. Luke cried out one last time and crumpled backward to the blessedly cool flagstones of the Great Massassi Temple, as everything turned a smothering, final black around him…

Cilghal drew up short as she noticed the robed figure sprawled on the flagstones under the sky. His hands were thrown back as if to defend against something. “Master Skywalker!” she called. The other trainees rushed forward. Cilghal pushed through the gathered students and knelt beside the fallen man. Luke’s face seemed curdled in an outcry of pain or fear. His eyes were squeezed shut, his lips were curled back in a grimace.
On the stone floor beside him lay his lightsaber, as if it had proved useless against whatever enemy he had fought. Cilghal propped Luke’s head up, touching his pale-brown hair. Rivulets of cold sweat glistened on his face, but she felt no warmth on his skin. She probed, using her newfound abilities in the Force, desperately searching. 
“What happened to him?” Dorsk 81 said in great alarm. 
“Is he alive?” Streen asked. “I can’t hear him.”
Cilghal probed wither her sensing abilities and shook her orange and muddy-green head. “He’s breathing. I can sense very little heartbeat, just the faintest pulse. But I can’t find him inside. When I touch him with the Force, all I find is a great empty spot…” She turned to look at the others with her sad round Calamarian eyes. “It’s as if he has left us.”
“What can we do?” Kirana Ti asked.
Cilghal cradled Luke’s motionless head in her lap and blinked her huge Calamarian eyes, unable to speak for a long moment.
“We are all alone now,” she finally said. 

If Artoo couldn’t hear him, and if Leia or the other Jedi trainees could not identify his presence, then perhaps Luke could communicate with someone on his own plane of existence—another glistening Jedi spirit he had spoken to many times before. 
“Ben!” Luke called. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, can you hear me?” His voiced hummed through the ether. With all the emotional firepower he could dredge from the bottom of his soul, Luke shouted into the silence. “Ben!” Growing more concerned at hearing no answer, he called for others. “Yoda! Father—Anakin Skywalker!” He waited, but there was no response.
…Until he sensed a coldness ripple through the air like an icicle slowly melting. Words trembled from the walls. “They can’t hear you, Skywalker, but I can.”
Luke spun around and saw a crack form in the stone walls. It grew darker as a tarlike silhouette oozed out and congealed into the shape of a cowled man whose features were distinct now that Luke could see him in the spirit plane. The stranger had long black hair, shadowed skin, and the tattoo of a black sun emblazoned on his forehead. His eyes were like chips of obsidian and just as sharp. His mouth bore a cruel scowl, the expression of one who has been betrayed and has had much time to think bitter thoughts. 
“Exar Kun,” Luke said, and the dark spirit understood him perfectly well.
“Do you enjoy having your spirit trapped away from your body, Skywalker?” Kun said in a mocking voice. “I have had four thousand years to get accustomed to it. The first century or two are the worst.”
Luke glared at him. “You corrupted my students, Exar Kun. You caused the death of Gantoris. You turned Kyp Durron against me.”
Kun laughed. “Perhaps it was your own failings as a teacher. Or their own delusions.”
“What makes you think I’ll stay like this for thousands of years?” Luke said.
“You will have no choice,” Kun answered, “once I have destroyed your physical body. Trapping my own spirit inside these temples was the only way I could survive when the final holocaust came. The allied Jedi Knights devastated the surface of Yavin 4. They killed off the Massassi people I had kept alive, and they destroyed my own body in the inferno. My spirit was forced to wait and wait and wait until finally you brought your Jedi students here, students who could hear my voice once they learned how to listen.”
An echo of fear rang through Luke’s mind, but he forced himself to sound calm and brave. “You can’t harm my body, Kun. You can’t touch anything physical. I’ve tried it myself.”
“Ah, but I have other ways to fight,” Kun’s spirit said. “And I have had endless millennia to practice. Rest assured, Skywalker, I will destroy you.” As if finished with his taunting, Kun sank like smoke through the cracks in the polished flagstones, descending to the heart of the Great Temple. In his wake he left Luke alone but more determined than ever to break free from his ethereal prison. He would find a way. A Jedi could always find a way. 

When the twins suddenly started crying on their cots beside her, Leia woke up with a feeling of dread. 
"It's Uncle Luke!" Jaina said. 
"He's gonna be hurt," Jacen said. 
Leia bolted upright and felt a series of whistling, tingling vibrations through her body, unlike anything she had ever encountered before. She sensed more than heard the howling wind, a gathering storm trapped inside the temple-centered in the grand audience chamber where Luke lay. She threw on a white robe, cinched it around her waist, and dashed into the hall. 
Several other Jedi trainees emerged from their quarters, also sensing an indefinable dread. The twins jumped out of their beds, and Leia called back to them, "You two stay here." She doubted they would. "Artoo, watch over them!" she shouted to the droid, who was buzzing in confusion down the corridors, lights flashing. "Come to the grand audience chamber," Leia cried to the Jedi trainees. "Hurry!" 
Artoo spun around in the hall and returned to the children's quarters; the droid's confused bleeps and warbles followed Leia down the hall. She rode the turbolift to the top. When it stopped and opened its doors, storm winds howled around the vast, open chamber. Leia stumbled out into a cyclone. Cold rivers of air gushed through the horizontal skylights high in the walls. 
Ice crystals sparkled as the temperature plummeted. Wind drawn in from every direction struck the center of the room and spun around, corkscrewing, picking up speed in an irresistible force. Streen! The old Bespin hermit stood on the outskirts of the storm with his brown Jedi robe flapping around him. His wild gray hair writhed around his head as if charged with static. His lips mumbled something incomprehensible, and his 
eyes remained closed as if he were having a nightmare. Leia knew that even powerful Jedi could not manipulate large-scale phenomena like the weather; but they could move objects, and she realized that was what Streen did now. Not changing the weather, but simply moving the air, drawing it in from all directions, creating a self-contained but destructive tornado that struck toward Luke's body. 
"No!" she shouted into the starving wind. "Streen!" 
The cyclone struck Luke, buffeted his body, and lifted it into the air. Leia ran toward her paralyzed brother, feet barely touching the ground as the powerful winds knocked her sideways. The storm wrenched her off balance, and she found herself thrown through the air, flying like an insect toward the stone walls. She spun around and reached out, calming herself enough to use her own abilities with the Force, to nudge her body away. 
Instead of being crushed against the stone blocks, she slid softly to the floor. Luke's body continued rising, tugged upward by the hurricane. His Jedi robe wound around him as the winds spun him like a corpse launched out of a star-freighter air lock into the grave of space. Streen didn't seem aware of what he was doing. Leia staggered to her feet again and jumped. This time she rode the circling air currents, flying around the fringe of the cyclone toward her helpless brother. She reached out to grab the tail of his robe, felt her fingers clutch rough fabric, and then burn as the robe was snatched away from her. 
She fell back to the floor. Luke had been drawn up into the tornado's mouth, rising toward the skylights. "Luke!" she cried. "Please help me." She had no idea if he could hear her, or if he could do anything. Gathering strength in her leg muscles, she leaped into the air again. It might be possible to use her Jedi skills of levitation for a brief moment; Luke had done it several times, although she herself had never mastered the skill. Now, though, it mattered more than it ever had before. 
As Leia sprang upward, the wind caught her. She rose high enough to grab Luke's body. She wrapped her arms around his waist, twisted her legs around his ankles, holding him, hoping her weight would drag him down. But as they started to drop, the winds picked up in intensity, howling and roaring. Leia's skin went numb from the blinding wintry cold. They shot toward the roof of the grand audience chamber, toward the widest skylight, where jagged icicles hung like javelins. 
Leia suddenly knew what Streen intended to do to them, whether consciously or unconsciously. They would be sucked out of the Great Temple, tossed high into the sky, and then allowed to crash thousands of feet to the spear-pointed branches of the jungle canopy. 
The turbolift door opened. Kirana Ti charged out, followed by Tionne and Kam Solusar. 
"Stop Streen!" Leia shouted. Kirana Ti reacted instantly. She wore thin but supple red armor from the scaled hides of reptiles from Dathomir. She had been a warrior on her own world, fighting with untrained and unhoned skill in the Force, but she had also fought in physical combat as well. Kirana Ti launched herself forward on long, muscular legs, ducking her head as she charged into the cyclonic wind that surrounded Streen. 
The old hermit stood entranced, spinning slowly around with his arms dangling at his sides and his fingertips spread apart, as if trying to catch something. Kirana Ti staggered as she hit the wind, but she wrenched her head aside, spread her legs, and dug the toes of her bare feet against the stone floor for traction. She shoved forward into the wind and finally shattered through into the dead zone of the storm. She tackled Streen to the flagstoned floor and locked his arms behind his back. Streen cried out, then blinked his eyes open. He looked wildly around in confusion. Instantly the wind stopped blowing. The air fell still. 
High up at the ceiling of the grand audience chamber Leia and Luke plunged toward the unforgiving flagstones below. Luke fell like a doll, and Leia tried to remember how to use her levitation skills, but her mind went blank with panic. Tionne and Kam Solusar raced forward, stretching out their arms, using what they had been taught. Less than a meter above the crushing stones, Leia found herself slowed, pausing in the air beside Luke's body. They drifted gently to the floor. Leia cradled Luke against her, but her brother did not respond. 
Streen sat up, and Kam Solusar ran over to help Kirana Ti hold him. The old hermit began to weep. Kam Solusar gnashed his teeth and looked as if he wanted to kill the old hermit then and there, but Kirana Ti stopped him. "Don't hurt him," she said. "He doesn't know what he was doing." 
"A nightmare," Streen said, "the Dark Man talking to me. Whispering to me. He never lets go. I was fighting him in my dream." Streen looked around for sympathy or encouragement. 
"I was going to kill him and save us all, but you woke me." At last Streen realized where he was. He looked around the grand audience chamber until his gaze fell upon Leia holding Luke. 
"He tricked you, Streen," Kirana Ti said in a hard voice. "You weren't fighting the Dark Man. He was manipulating you. You were his tool. If we hadn't stopped you, you would have destroyed Master Skywalker." Streen began sobbing. 
On the raised platform Tionne helped Leia lift Luke back onto the stone table. "He doesn't seem injured," Leia said. 
"By sheer luck," Tionne said. She wondered aloud, "Did the ancient Jedi Knights have to deal with challenges like this?" 
"If they did," Leia said, "I hope you manage to find the old stories. We need to learn what those Jedi did to defeat their enemies." 
Streen stood, shaking himself free of the gripping hands of Kirana Ti and Kam Solusar. The old man's face was filled with outrage. "We must destroy the Dark Man," Streen said, "before he kills all of us." Leia felt a grip of unbearable cold in her heart, knowing that Streen was right. 

    

It really came as no surprise when, as I lay down in my bunk, an oily, glistening black stain seeped into the ceiling above me. It resolved itself into the shadowy image of a tall, slender, sharp-featured man. He wore archaic clothes and long hair. He knitted his long fingers together at his waist. "Your mind-trick was quite good, Keiran Halcyon."
"High praise from a Dark Lord of the Sith." I watched him through half-lidded eyes. "Did it really fool you, Exar Kun, or were you just too trusting in using Streen's senses?"
The Dark Lord threw his head back in a silent laugh. "Fire and spirit, good. I had misjudged you because Gantoris and Kyp held you in such contempt."
"And here I thought a man should be known by his enemies."
"A truism I once lived by." The shade descended from the ceiling and stood at the foot of my bed. "I was once like you, a mere man filled with ambitions."
I sat up and snorted. "If you're the 'after' holegraph, I'm not interested."
"Quite droll, Keiran, not as full of anger or fear as the others." Exar Kun's obsidian gaze bored into me. I tried to armor my mind against him the way I had with Mara Jade, but he was in and out too quickly for me to stop him. "You have more experience and more maturity. You are a riper fruit."
"But not to be plucked by you." I drew my knees up and hugged them to my chest. "You continue to misjudge me if you think there is anything I want from you."
"Oh, there is, you just don't realize it." A confident grin twisted his ebon features. He gestured casually with his right hand and a window opened in the air, hanging there in the center of my room. Within its confines I saw an Imperial Star Destroyer and I knew I was looking at the Invidious. It looked more worn than it had in the image General Cracken had showed me, but battle damage had far from crippled it. Swarms of Tri-fighters cruised around it on picket duty. The image zoomed in, closing on the bridge, and exploded in through the forward view port. There stood Leonia Tavira, a bit older than Cracken's image of her, but all the more beautiful for it. She wore her black hair longer, so it fell to the swell of her breasts. Her figure had become less gangling and more rounded---while still petite, she had developed
symmetrically so without other things or people around to judge scale, she appeared perfectly normal. Her violet eyes gleamed with a feral cunning that sizzled electrically through the image I was being shown.
The long-dead Sith Lord laughed lightly. "I can give you the power to destroy the Invids. Wipe them out. Or . . ." The image of Leonia brightened slightly. "I can give you the power to possess her and rule beside her. I will use the two of you as the focal point for a new Empire that I will spread throughout the galaxy."
I felt a stirring in my loins, then forced myself to laugh and shake my head. "It's been a while for me, and she's pretty, but I'm not interested."
"No, of course, you are not. You are a man of duty. Still here, on the Invidious, there are things you want."
The image pulled back a bit and slid over to center itself on an armored figure standing well back of Tavira. Two meters tall and apparently male, he wore a grey cloak over steel-grey armor. The armor looked as if it were made of the same plasteel used in stormtrooper armor, but had been shaped differently and layered with another material that provided texture and the grey color. The styling appeared more natural and primitive, as if designed to mimic the armored hide of some animal. This remained true of the facemask the figure wore. Serpentine styling and diagonal eye slits gave it a very viperish cast. As soon as I saw him I knew he was the reason the Invidious could remain hidden. As I watched, his head came up and he stared straight out at me. His head then dipped and the image faded for a moment. Then I saw him striding forward toward Tavira. He gestured and she began shouting orders that started a flurry of activity.
Exar Kun yawned. "He is the true foe you seek. He is responsible for her successes. With my power you can defeat him, supplant him, do with her what you wish."
"I'll get there without your help at all, Exar Kun."
The shade's voice sharpened. "Perhaps, but you will not get here without it."
The image he presented me shifted and my stomach imploded. I saw Mirax lying on a bier, very much like Master Skywalker above us. A soft silver light bathed her. Her arms rested at her sides and she looked as if she were just napping. The only anomalous feature in the image was a small grey band resting on her forehead, pulsing with red and green lights. She looked very peaceful, and try as I might, I could sense no distress from her.
And nothing else.
"I can give her to you. I can tell you exactly where she is." Exar Kun shaped his face into what he thought was a compassionate expression. "You know the Force allows me to show you the past, the present, the future. This is where she is, your wife, right now. Hidden away, where you will never find her without my help."
"And what would you have me do for your help?"
"Kill Skywalker."
I smiled. "Mirax's life for his'? No deal."
"You want more?" The Dark Lord laughed defiantly. "I can give you more, I will give you more. I will give you your wife and Tavira. You can have her ship and destroy her fleet. You can destroy your father-in-law's ship. You can return to Corellia and destroy those who hate you there!"
I shook my head. "No."
"No?"
"No." I sighed. "You don't get it, do you? You've already lost and you're continuing down that losing path. Haven't the last four thousand years taught you anything?"
"I know more than you could ever hope to learn in four thousand years or forty thousand years."
"That may be, but I know the one thing you don't." I rose from my bed and pointed a finger at him. "You're never going to win. You destroy those who oppose you, and what does that leave you?"
"The faithful."
"From among whom arises a rival. You halve a schism."
"And I destroy the heretics."
"Yes, you do." I nodded carefully. "And again and again that cycle repeats itself and you let it go on because you've forgotten the most fundamental truth of reality: Life creates the Force. When Kyp destroyed Carida, he diminished your power. When you destroyed Gantoris, you diminished your power. You're a predator over-grazing your prey, but you can't stop because the dark side fills you with this aching hunger that will never be satisfied."
"Ha!" Exar Kun's laughter slashed at me, but sounded just a bit too shrill. "You cannot speak of the dark side until you have experienced it. Join me and learn that you are wrong."
"I don't think so. A Two-Onebee droid doesn't need to contract a disease to diagnose and treat it." I folded my arms across my chest and laughed at him. "I'm not fodder for your fantasies, go away."
Exar Kun lifted his head. "I came to you, now, inviting you to join me. I would have given you much. When next you come to me, and you will, I shall not be so generous."
As he spoke the image of Mirax began to fade, but it did so in a most horrible way. I watched her lying there, aging years for every passing second. Her dark hair became grey and brittle, then fell out in clumps. Her flesh became ashen, her eyes sunken. Her body puddled out through the seams of her clothing, then they split, letting me see bare bones. A gust of wind came up, scattering them, spinning her skull around like a child's toy. Finally it came to rest, gap-toothed, staring at me with empty sockets.
I blinked the image away and found myself alone again.

Luke's image shimmered but cast no light in the dim chambers where the twins lay sleeping. The door was open. Cilghal sat up studying in her own room across the corridor, but she could not yet hear Luke's voice. The boy Jacen could—and Luke had no time. "Jacen," he said with his muffled inside-the-head voice. The boy stirred. Beside him Jaina sighed and rolled over in her sleep. "Jacen!" Luke said again. "Jaina, I need your help. Only you can help me." 
The boy woke up, blinking his dark eyes. He scanned the room, yawned, then fixed his eyes upon Luke's image. "Uncle Luke?" he said. "Help? Okay." 
"Wake your sister and follow me. Tell her to raise the alarm and bring all the other Jedi. But you have to help me now! Maybe you can hold them off long enough." 
Jacen didn't ask questions. By the time he shook his sister, she had already started to awaken. She too saw Luke, and the boy needed only a few 
words to explain the situation. Jacen trotted down the hall on his little legs. Luke drifted in front of him, urging Jacen faster, faster, toward the turbolift. Jaina ran into Cilghal's quarters and screamed, "Help, help!" at the top of her lungs. "Uncle Luke needs help." The Jedi trainees surged out of their quarters. 
Suddenly alarms rang out. Luke realized that Artoo, still standing sentry duty in the grand audience chamber, must have triggered them. He didn't know, though, what the astromech droid could do against the monstrous winged creatures summoned by Exar Kun. Jacen hesitated inside the turbolift while Luke showed which button to 
push. "Hurry, Jacen!" Luke said. The turbolift shot upward and spilled them into the vast, dim chamber. Down at the end of the promenade, Artoo hummed back and forth, whistling and warbling shrilly. 
His arc-welding arm extended, flashing blue sparks, but the reptilian creatures flapped into the air, circling around the sluggish droid as if they considered Artoo to be no threat. Two of the creatures flapped up from the raised platform upon hearing the turbolift doors open. They honked and hissed, spitting at the very small boy who emerged alone to challenge them. Artoo squealed, as if thankful for any sort of help. The alarms continued to hammer through the temple.  
 The third creature perched at the edge of the long stone table on which Luke's body lay. Its two heads bobbed forward to let out a dual squeal of annoyance. One of the heads snapped down to tear a mouthful of cloth from Luke's robe. The other head curled back scaled lips and flashed a jagged row of fangs.
"They're angry," Jacen said as if he had some kind of empathy with the creatures. "They're...wrong." 
"Chase them away from my body, Jacen," Luke said, eyeing the poisonous stingers on their tails, the vicious teeth, the sharp claws.... "Go help Artoo. The others will be here in just a few seconds." 
Without fear Jacen shrieked like a wild warrior as he ran toward the monsters on his stubby legs. He flailed his arms, yelling. Two of the creatures squawked and swooped into the air, then flapped their leathery wings to dive at him. Artoo whistled a warning. Jacen ducked at the last moment. The creatures dragged their hooked metallic claws on the flagstone floor, sending up showers of sparks. The boy didn't slow. He ran toward the last of the reptilian creatures, who stared hungrily down at Luke's soft, closed eyelids. 
Jacen reached the raised platform. The third creature rose into the air, thrashing with its scorpion tail and snapping with both heads full of clacking fangs. Unable to fight for himself, Luke paralleled the boy as Jacen struggled up onto the raised platform. Grim and determined, the boy stood guard by his uncle's motionless form. Artoo came up beside Jacen, his welding arm still crackling. Then Luke saw what to do—if it was possible, if he could manage to use his skills in such a way. Next to his robed body lay a black cylinder studded with power buttons. "Jacen," Luke said, "take my lightsaber." 
The three flying creatures circled the chamber, croaking at each other as if receiving instructions from the Exar Kun. Without hesitation the boy picked up the lightsaber handle. It was as long as his small forearm. "Don't know how," Jacen said to Luke. 
"I'll show you," Luke said. "Let me guide you... let me fight with you." 
Talons extended, the three flying creatures plunged toward the boy, squealing with bloodlust in their eyes. Jacen held the smooth handle in front of him and pushed the activation button. With a loud snap-hiss the lightsaber's deadly shaft blazed in the dimness. The little boy planted his feet apart, raised the glowing blade, and prepared to defend the Jedi Master, Luke Skywalker. 
Cilghal scooped Jaina up in her arms and ran down the halls as Dorsk 81 and Tionne joined her at the turbolift. They rose to the highest level, ready to battle for their Master, as they had done against the unleashed storm. But even Cilghal's greatest fears did not prepare her for the astonishing sight that greeted her as she entered the grand audience chamber.  
 Little Jacen held a lightsaber in his hand with all the grace and confidence of a master swordsman. The trio of flying creatures came at him, jabbing with their dripping stingers, snapping with long teeth, reaching with hooked claws. But Jacen pirouetted with the energy blade, wielding the lightsaber as if it were an extension of his arm. The blade crackled and hummed through the air. 
Artoo-Detoo, agitated, buzzed back and forth, doing his best to keep the creatures from coming too close to Master Skywalker's body. Jacen continued to fight. 
One of the lizard creatures darted in with gnashing fangs, but Jacen deftly cleaved off a head with one smooth stroke. He left only a smoking neck stump as the other head of the two-headed monster writhed and flailed and spat. The creature crashed to the floor and flopped its leathery wings against the flagstones. 
The remaining two monsters struck with their scorpion stingers. The little boy swung the lightsaber, neatly slicing off one pointed stinger, then rolled out of the way as gouts of black poison spurted from the amputated end. The evil liquid burned on the ancient Massassi stones like acid, boiling with greasy gray-and-purple smoke. 
Maddened with pain, the injured thing flapped in the air until it grappled against its companion, rending with claws and snapping with two heads full of tearing teeth. It struck with the useless stump of its stinger, but the stronger creature stabbed with its own stinger—leaving a burning hole in the torso of its attacker, a hole that continued to burn and sizzle as the poison ate deeper and deeper. 
The stronger flying lizard latched its jaws on to the scaly throat of the other. When its victim had ceased its struggles, the survivor released its claws, flapping higher as the dead carcass fell with a thud onto the floor. Artoo came forward to zap the limp creature, making certain it was dead. 
Cilghal, Tionne, and Dorsk 81 froze on the threshold of the turbolift, watching the impossible tableau. "We've got to help him!" Dorsk 81 said. 
"How?" Tionne asked. "We have no weapons." 
Cilghal assessed the furious battle. "Perhaps Jacen doesn't need our help." Jaina snatched her hand free from Cilghal's grip and scrambled down the promenade even as the others hesitated for a fraction of a second. Cilghal ran after her. 
The last of the reptiles shrieked through double throats, infuriated by the attack of its companion. It dived down in an unstoppable plunge. Jacen stepped back to meet it, holding the lightsaber poised at his shoulder, waiting for the right moment. Coolly, as the creature came in with dripping fangs and outstretched 
claws, Jacen swung in a clean arc with grace and skill, perfectly in command of his reflexes. The glowing blade struck and severed both throats in one sizzling flash. The carcass of the creature, reflexively convulsing its wings, crashed into Jacen and drove him to the floor. 
Artoo rolled forward to help, bleeping. "He is all right," Jaina called, finally reaching the raised platform. "Jacen!" 
"Jaina!" Cilghal shouted, catching up with her. 
The tip of the lightsaber appeared, smoking and blazing through the carcass as Jacen cut his way free of the stiff wings. Cilghal assisted him. In surprise Jaina looked up to see the first fallen creature lurch back up, clinging to life with its remaining head, still desperate to kill Luke. With one stump of its severed neck still oozing dark blood, it clutched the edge of the stone table and hauled itself up, snapping its scorpion tail in convulsive twitches and preparing to sting. Its wings flapped, helping it balance on the table where it could rip apart Luke's body. 
In one last moment of defiance, pushed on by the evil spirit controlling it, the wounded creature struck toward Luke's unprotected throat. But Jaina arrived first. The little girl jumped up and grabbed its wings, yanking backward with all her weight. Writhing and snapping, the creature tried to bite down on the hands holding its leathery wings. A mere second behind Jaina, Cilghal wrapped her powerful Calamarian hands around the creature's long serpentine throat even as Jaina continued to yank backward at its wings. Cilghal let out a high grunt as she wrung its neck, crushing a succession of vertebrae as if they were dry twigs. The thing slumped down across the table, finally dead. 
Jaina panted and slid into a squat. Jacen climbed to his feet and looked around as if confused. He blinked his eyes sleepily, then, with a deft movement of one small finger, deactivated the lightsaber. The humming sound of the blade vanished into the sudden silence of the chamber.  
 The turbolift opened, and the remaining Jedi trainees rushed out, drawing up short as they saw the carnage. Tionne reached the raised platform. Her silvery hair flowed behind her like a comet's tail. She bent over Luke's body and, with an expression of disgust, gripped the still-oozing reptilian carcass of the last slain creature and flung it away from the Jedi Master. 
Cilghal rushed to Jacen just as he calmly replaced the lightsaber beside Luke's motionless form. She grabbed him, hugged him, and then stared in awe at the little boy. Only moments ago this not-quite-three-year-old child had fought like a legendary lightsaber duelist. Dorsk 81 and the other Jedi trainees came forward. "He fought as well as a Master!" Dorsk 81 said. "It reminded me of the duel between Gantoris and Master Skywalker." 
"Uncle Luke was with me," Jacen said. "He showed me. He's here." 
Cilghal blinked her large round eyes. 
"What do you mean?" Tionne asked. 
"Can you see him now?" Dorsk 81 said. 
"Yes, he's right there," Jaina pointed to thin air. "He says he's proud of us." She giggled. Jacen giggled too, but he looked exhausted, covered with dark ichor. He slumped down on Cilghal's lap. 
The Jedi trainees looked at each other, then gazed at the open air above Luke's prone body. Artoo whistled in confusion. 
"What else does he say?" Cilghal said. 
Jacen and Jaina both sat still for a moment, as if listening. "Exar Kun. He's making the trouble," Jacen said. 
Jaina finished, "Stop Exar Kun. Then Uncle Luke can come back."

I retreated to the center of the small courtyard, then unveiled my presence. I pushed my sphere of responsibility out, but had barely gotten it two meters before Kun appeared and swallowed my reflection in the obsidian stones of the pedestal.
"So, you have come to me to ask me to help you." Haughtiness rippled through the Force. "I warned you that I would not be generous with you this time."
I laughed at him. "I remember. That's not why I'm here."
Kun's head came up as his face contracted into a fierce scowl. "What? Why have you violated my sanctuary?"
"Just the thing I wanted to talk with you about." I stroked my goatee and began pacing back and forth before him. "I checked New Republic law. Property claims are abandoned well shy of four millennia. As a result, I've filed a claim for this place, and now it's mine. I'd love to have you stick around, but your statue is right where the wife will want the entertainment center. You understand, don't you?"
"You insolent bug!" Kun opened his shadowy arms wide. "You prattle on as if your wit can armor you against my might."
"And you think you can hurt me?" I scoffed at him. "This is your eviction notice."
"You're playing with powers more titanic than you could ever know."
"Save the threats." I yawned. "I've been going over all the stuff you've done, and I've figured out your weakness. While disembodied, you can't affect the physical world."
Kun's expression darkened. "No?"
I shook my head. "No."
"Ah, then I cannot do this." The wraith waved an ethereal hand and sparks shot from each of the explosive packets I'd scattered about. Blue flames flared as the detonators each melted.
Just like the Jedi Holocron!
My nose closing against the stink of melted plastic, I glanced up at Kun. "Ooops."
Kun flicked a finger at me, sending me whirling across the courtyard. I tried to gather the Force around me to protect myself, but the shock at my error kept me from it. I slammed into an obsidian wall and heard a bone in my right forearm crack. I clutched the limb to my chest, but Kun spun me again, smashing my flank into a low wall. Ribs crunched with that impact and I felt something inside go, as well. Kun was enjoying himself, probably for the first time in millennia, the very thought of which made me vomit. Kun's laughter echoed through his stronghold as he pitched me around, dancing me and rolling me back and forth across the courtyard. I thought his actions were haphazard, especially when he lifted me into the air, then dashed me down, shattering my left leg, but even through the pain I had a clarity of mind. He wanted me thinking, not dead, yet, and that made my stomach roll again.
Eventually, like a child tiring of a toy, he let me go. I slumped to my side and involuntarily flinched as his shade came to cover me. "Just because you never saw me affect the material world, it doesn't mean I couldn't. And even if it is something of an effort to do so, here, in my stronghold, it is a pleasure beyond your possible ken."
I let my words hiss out between clenched teeth. "I think I'll put a wideview holoprojector right where you're standing."
"Childish jokes from a childish mind." He gestured casually and all the explosive charges I'd placed sailed out of the temple and splashed in the black lake. Glancing down at me, Kun let his voice become icy. "You could have been raised to the level of divinity by my hand. Now you will be destroyed by it."
Even before I could taunt him again, he gestured and I felt a presence behind me. I rolled over and saw Mirax standing there, her eyes full of fire. "I should have known, CorSec, that you would abandon me. You said you wanted me more than you wanted your Jedi heritage. I gave you all that I am. I want to bear your children. This is how you repay me'? You leave me alone, all alone, dying alone; while you play games with rocks and pictures'?"
The vehemence in her voice ripped straight through me. It collapsed my stomach and shoved it out through my spine. I wrapped my hands around my belly and hunched forward. "No, Mirax, no!"
The wailing calls of all the infants who had died on Carida swirled around me to accompany her voice. "Hear them, Corran. They are your sons, your daughters. They are the children you have denied to the world. You accused Exar Kun of being a fool because he destroys life, but you are more of a fool. You could have created it. With me. If you wanted me. If you truly loved me."
I hugged my broken arm to fractured ribs, folding around the pain in my middle. I knew she was nothing but an illusion Kun had conjured from my mind, but it seemed too real for me to disbelieve it. Kun was feeding back to me my own image of Mirax, and infusing it with everything I feared. Because the attack came from within, I had no emotional armor with which to shield myself. I heard in her voice exactly the words that terrified me.
I reached out to her with my left hand, lifting my face toward her. "No, Mirax, no. I do love you!"
"How can you love her?" My father's voice slashed at me from behind. "Her father hired the bounty hunter who murdered me. A murder you could have prevented. Was that it? Had she seduced you even then? Were you her creature? Did she lay warm in your arms so I could lay cold in them?"
I levered myself around into a sitting position to meet my father's accusing stare, then had to tear my eyes from him. Gone was the man I had known in life. His flesh had become ashen, his eyes holes onto a void. The only color on him came from the blood spurting from his wounds to puddle around him. I heard it splashing from him. I couldn't get the cloying scent out of my nostrils and dreaded the touch of the rivulet slowly snaking its way toward me. "You know that's not true!"
"I only know you failed me. You left me to die."
Mirax chimed in. "As you leave me to die."
My mother's voice joined them. "He never cared if I died, either."
Laughter, low and cold, echoed from the obsidian walls. I looked up and saw the image of Lujayne Forge, one of my first friends in Rogue Squadron. The right side of her face had been burned away by blaster fire. "He let me die. He wanted to play the hero, so I paid the price."
"No!" I slammed my right fist against the courtyard stones, breaking it and grinding the bones in my arm. I latched onto the pain and used it to recapture control of my mind. Their accusations bored into me, freeing the part of me that second-guessed everything I did. I knew that piece of me well and loathed it. I could replay conversations in my mind for hours when it held sway, wishing I'd said this, wondering why I'd said that, hoping things would not be taken in the worst way, but dreading the fact that they would. When I began doubting myself, I was paralyzed. The cycle always built on itself, growing, reviewing more things, until I dissected my whole life. And it continues until I get angry at myself and stop it.
The desire to give in to the anger and cut Exar Kun short almost overwhelmed me. That option hung there, tantalizing me. I could use my anger like a lightsaber. I could slice to ribbons these false spirits, these treacherous phantoms. I would cut down Exar Kun's army, then I would rip into him. He would be nothing before me and my anger. I would sunder him the way my explosives should have sundered his shrine. And then I can find other targets that deserve destruction... I raised my right hand triumphantly, then curled it down into a fist. Pain jolted through me again and in its wake came outrage. I slammed my hand against the ground and screamed, then shot Exar Kun a sidelong glance. "No. My anger is not for you to use."
The Dark Lord towered above me. "Anger is a most sweet nectar. Despair will also suffice."
Another phantom congealed before me, looking and feeling and smelling and sounding more real than I was myself. The little boy, all tow-headed and grey-eyed, barely older than Jacen Solo, looked at me with his lower lip quivering. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He reached out with little stubby-fingered hands and took my broken hand into his.
"Who hurt you, Daddy?" His innocent gaze searched my face. "I can make it better. I can. Let me. Please . . ." His voice became a plaintive wail that faded with his image. I felt his grip, feathery and gentle, soothing and kind, fading to be replaced with pain. "Why won't you let me help?"
The lump rising in my throat strangled me. Through the boy's fading image I saw Mirax, no longer hateful, standing there. She wore a simple white gown. She rubbed her hands lovingly over her swollen belly, the look on her face one of pure, unadulterated joy. The image shifted slightly as the boy reappeared, older, yet still a child, to place his hand against his mother's rounded stomach.
Then both of their images blew apart into a million razor-edged fragments that burned through me.
"Just as well," I heard my father say, "any child of that union would have been as disappointing as you have been."
That simple remark detonated like a bomb inside me. I had forever hoped that I would win my father's approval, that he would like me for who and what I was. He was never stinting with his praise, but with his death I had been left trying to guess what he would have thought about this action or that. Even my decision to become a Jedi had been made to win his approval and to model myself on him. Yet in his voice, I heard that I had failed. The sum and total of my life, the'sum and total of the lives of any children I helped create, and whatever they would create; all of it would be worthless in his eyes. One of the anchor points for my life crumbled, eroding in uncertainty, cutting me adrift without a chance of recovering myself.  
I was lost.
I was hopeless.
I was the ultimate failure.
I could take no more.
"Is that the best you've got'?" The tone of the voice had enough edge to etch transparisteel and would have flensed me alive, but I knew it wasn't directed at me. Through tear-clouded eyes I looked up and saw Mara Jade sauntering into the temple. "Babies crying and ghosts whispering lies from beyond the grave? The Dark Lord of the Sith I knew would have been ashamed to use such tactics."
"What?" Exar Kun's voice roared, as if in volume and intensity it could batter her down. "Who dares?"
"Who cares, more correctly." She pointed at me. "Horn here has been worked over by the Empire's best and never broke. Isard would have had you digitized, analyzed and discarded without a second thought, and she wasn't even Force-sensitive. Darth Vader would have found you amusingly quaint, and the Emperor...well..." Mara Jade's eyes flashed mercilessly. "The Emperor succeeded in destroying the Jedi, so he'd see you as the very definition of failure!"
"Yes, but your vaunted Emperor is dead!"
I found my voice again. "Something the two of you have in common, then." I shoved myself up and balanced awkwardly on my good leg. "And something else: he didn't know when he'd lost, either. It's over!"
Kun regarded me anew and I felt his consciousness stab into my brain. It withdrew quickly, as if it had been stung by the thought I had nestled there. Kun laughed aloud. "A trap? You and your companions seek to trap me?"
Kun doubled his image's volume and smiled most cruelly at us. "You think your petty plans will work against me? You thought your coming here would defeat me? Never." He looked away toward the Great Temple, then back down at us. "This may have been a brave attempt on your part, but your friends have made a grave error. Their defense of Skywalker is only as strong as the weakest person defending him, and they have left him vulnerable again."
Mara looked at me, clearly alarmed. "What's he talking about?"
"Luke's hurt." I winced as pain shot through my belly. "Streen is guarding him."
Exar Kun laughed again. "Yes, Streen. My Streen." The Dark Lord's image began to shrink back into the obsidian of his temple. "I will finish him, then come again for you. Tremble in fear. Cower in anticipation."
His presence faded from the Temple and I tried to straighten up. I managed a half-staggered step, then went down on one knee. I guess I fell further or faster than I expected because I next found Mara kneeling next to me.

Streen dozed cross-legged on the cold flagstone floor before Master Skywalker. He folded his arms over his knees, comfortable in the many-pocketed jumpsuit he had brought with him from his lonely days as a gas prospector on Bespin. He could no longer smell the bitter sulfurous taint of rich plumes of deep-layer gases. Now Streen had a greater mission—to guard Master Skywalker. 
Low-slanted light from outside elongated the shadows in the grand audience chamber. Twelve candles, one placed by each of the Jedi trainees, flickered around Luke's body, shedding a faint but protective glow into the motionless air. The small bright points glittered as the darkness gathered all around. 
Streen muttered to himself. No, he would not listen to the Dark Man's words. No, he would not serve Exar Kun's purposes. No, he would not do anything to harm Master Skywalker. No! In his lap, cool and hard against his callused hands, he held the handle of Luke's lightsaber. This time he could fight it. This time the Dark Man would not win. 
Some of the other Jedi trainees had expressed grave misgivings about letting Streen near Master Skywalker, especially armed with a lightsaber. But Streen had begged for his chance at restitution, and Kirana Ti had spoken on his behalf. The others would watch over him. Master Skywalker would be in danger, but they had to take the risk. 
Streen let the fuzzy caress of sleep work its way into his mind. His grizzled head nodded to his chest. Whispering voices sounded like breezes in his mind, forming gentle words, soothing phrases...cold promises. The words demanded that he wake up, but Streen resisted them, not knowing if they were evil suggestions or the insistences of his companions. When Streen felt he had waited long enough, he allowed himself to snap awake. 
The voices fell silent as he blinked his eyes. Another voice, external this time, replaced the silence. "Wake up, my student. The winds are blowing." 
Streen focused on the black form of Exar Kun in the center of the throne room. In the flickering candlelight and dim rays from the dying day, Streen could see chiseled features on the onyx silhouette, more detailed than he had ever seen before on the shadow of the Dark Man. Exar Kun turned a well-defined face toward him, completely ebony as if molded from lava stone: high cheekbones, haughty eyes, a thin, angry mouth. Long black hair like carbon wires swept across his shoulder, gathered in a thick ponytail. Padded armor covered his body, and the pulsing tattoo of a black sun burned from his forehead. 
Streen climbed slowly to his feet. He felt calm and strong, angry at how the Dark Man had set a sharp hook in his own weakness and had dragged him along. "I won't do your bidding, Dark Man," he said. 
Exar Kun laughed. "And how do you propose to resist? You are already mine." 
"If you believe that," Streen said, and took a deep breath, strengthening his voice, "then you have made your first mistake." He brought up the handle of Luke's lightsaber, igniting it with a loud snap-hiss. 
Exar Kun's shadow flinched backward, much to Streen's surprise and satisfaction. "Good," Kun said with false bravado, "now take the weapon and cleave Skywalker in two. Let us be done with this." 
Streen took one step toward Exar Kun, holding the green lightsaber before him. "This blade is meant for you, Dark Man." 
"If you think that weapon will have any effect on me," Kun said, "perhaps you should ask your friend Gantoris—or have you forgotten what happened to him when he defied me?" 
A vision flashed through Streen's mind: Gantoris's crisped corpse incinerated from the inside out, his body turned to ash from the incredible fires of the dark side. Kun must have intended for that memory to drive Streen to despair; Gantoris had been his friend; he and Gantoris were the first two trainees Master Skywalker had found on his Jedi search. 
But rather than causing panic or dismay, the memory increased Streen's determination. He strode forward, staring down the shadowy man. 
"You are not wanted here, Exar Kun," he said. To his continued surprise the shadow of the ancient Sith Lord drifted back from him, down the promenade. 
"I can find other tools, Streen, if you prove difficult. I will show you no mercy when I have gained control once more. My Sith brothers will use the power stored within this network of temples. If you defy me, I can find new ways of inflicting pain far beyond the capabilities of your imagination—and you will endure all of them!" 
Kun's shadow drifted farther away...and a tall figure emerged from the left stone stairwell into the grand audience chamber: Kirana Ti clad in her polished reptilian armor, her muscles rippling in the pale candlelight, her curves making her look supple yet deadly. 
"Are you running away, Exar Kun?" Kirana Ti said. "Frightened off so easily?" Streen held his position, still gripping the lightsaber. 
"Another foolhardy student," Kun said, whirling to face her. "I would have come to you in time. The witches of Dathomir would be fine additions to a new Sith Brotherhood." 
"You'll never get a chance to ask them, Exar Kun. You are trapped here. You won't leave this chamber." She pressed forward to intimidate him by her very closeness. 
Kun's shadow distorted, but he held his ground. "You cannot threaten me." Kun loomed over her. 
Streen felt a stab of cold fear at the movement, but Kirana Ti ducked swiftly, fluidly, into a fighting stance. She reached to her waist and snatched one of the tools hanging there. A loud crackle seared the air, and she stood holding another ignited lightsaber. A long amethyst-and-white blade extended from the handle, humming like an angry insect. She thrashed the lightsaber from side to side. 
"Where did you get that weapon?" Kun demanded. 
"It belonged to Gantoris," she said. "He once tried to fight you and failed." She slashed with the lightsaber, and Kun flinched back toward Streen. "But I will succeed." 
Kirana Ti stalked toward the platform where Luke's body lay, where Streen stood on guard with the other lightsaber. Kun was trapped between them. 
Another Jedi trainee emerged from the right-side stairwell—grim and wiry Kam Solusar. "And if she fails," he said, "I will pick up the lightsaber and fight you." He marched forward, closing the distance to join her. 
Then Tionne came from the opposite stairwell, throwing her challenge at Exar Kun as she walked up to the platform. "And I will fight you as well." 
Cilghal stepped in with Jacen and Jaina, each holding one of her hands. "And we will fight you. We will all fight you, Exar Kun." 
The remaining Jedi trainees flooded into the chamber, converging in a group that surrounded the Dark Lord of the Sith. Kun raised his opaque arms in a sudden brisk gesture. With a flicker of wind the twelve candles around Master Skywalker's body snuffed out, plunging the room into deep shadow. 
"We're not afraid of the darkness," Tionne said in a firm voice. "We can make our own light." 
As his eyes adjusted, Streen saw that all twelve of the Jedi candidates were limned with the faintest sheen of an iridescent blue glow that grew brighter as the new Jedi converged around Exar Kun. 
"Even joined together, you are too weak to fight me!" the shadowy man said. 
Streen felt his throat constrict, his windpipe close. He choked, unable to breathe. The black silhouette turned, staring at those who resisted him. The Jedi trainees grasped their throats, straining to breathe, their faces darkening with the effort. Kun's shadow expanded, growing darker and more powerful. 
He towered over Streen. "Streen, take your lightsaber and finish these weaklings. Then I will allow you to live." 
Streen heard the blood sing in his ears as his body strained for oxygen. The rushing sound reminded him of blowing wind, gale-force storms. Wind. Air. He grasped the wind with his Jedi powers, moving the air itself and making it flow into his lungs, past Kun's invisible stranglehold. Cool, sweet oxygen filled him, and Streen exhaled and inhaled again. Reaching out with his power, he did the same for all the other Jedi students, nudging air into their lungs—helping them breathe, helping them grow stronger. 
"We are more powerful than you," Dorsk 81 said, gasping, in a tone that mixed challenge with amazement. 
"How you must hate me," Exar Kun said. Desperation tinged the edges of his voice. "I can feel your anger." 
Cilghal used the silken ambassadorial voice she had worked so hard to develop. "There is no anger," she said. "We don't hate you, Exar Kun. You are an object lesson for us. You have taught us much about what it is to be a true Jedi. By observing you we see that the dark side has little strength of its own. You have no power that we do not have. You merely used our own weaknesses against us." 
"We have seen enough of you," Kam Solusar said grimly from the edge of the circle, "and it's time for you to be vanquished." 
The Jedi trainees stepped closer together, cinching the circle around the trapped shadowy form. Streen held his lightsaber high, while across the circle Kirana Ti raised hers to a striking position. The nebulous glow around the new Jedi Knights grew brighter, a luminous fog that joined them in an unbroken ring, a solid band of light forged by the power of the Force within them. 
"I know your flaws," Kun said stridently. "You all have weaknesses. You—" The shadow lunged toward the streamlined form of Dorsk 81. The cloned Jedi candidate flinched, but the other trainees gave him strength. "You: Dorsk 81, a failure!" He sneered. "Eighty generations of your genetic structure were perfect, identical—but you were an anomaly. You were an outcast. A flaw." But the olive-skinned alien would not back down. 
"Our differences make us strong," he said. "I've learned that." 
"And you"—Exar Kun whirled to Tionne—“you have no Jedi powers. You are laughable. You can only sing songs about great deeds, while others go out and actually do them." 
Tionne smiled at him. Her mother-of-pearl eyes glittered in the dim light. "Someday the songs will tell of our great victory over Exar Kun—and I will sing them." 
The glow continued to brighten as the synergy between the trainees grew more powerful, weaving threads to reinforce their weak spots, to emphasize their strengths. Streen wasn't sure exactly when another image joined the Jedi candidates. He saw a new form without a physical body—short and hunched, with withered hands held in front of it. A misshapen funnel face, whiskered with tentacles, stared with small eyes hooded by a shelf of brow. Streen recognized the ancient Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas, who had spoken to them from the Holocron. 
Kun's image also saw the ancient Jedi Master, and his expression froze in a sculpted grimace of astonishment. 
"Together Jedi can overcome their weaknesses," Master Vodo said in a bubbly, congested voice. "Exar Kun, my student—you are defeated at last." 
"No!" the shadow screamed in a night-rending voice as the silhouette fought to discover a part of the circle he could breach. 
"Yes," came another voice, a strong voice. Opposite Master Vodo glimmered the faint, washed-out form of a young man in Jedi robes. Master Skywalker. 
"The way to extinguish a shadow," Cilghal said in her calm and confident voice, "is to increase the light." 
Kirana Ti stepped forward with the lightsaber that had been built by Gantoris. Streen met her with Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. The two stared into each other's eyes, nodded, and then struck with the brilliant luminous blades. Their beams crossed in the middle of Exar Kun's shadowy body—pure light intersecting pure light with an explosion of lightning. The flash of dazzling white seemed as bright as an exploding sun. 
Darkness flooded out of the shade of Exar Kun. The blackness shattered, and fragments flew around the circle, seeking a weak heart in which to hide. 
Streen and Kirana Ti kept their lightsabers crossed, the energy sizzling and searing. With the Force, Streen touched the winds again. The air inside the grand audience chamber swirled with increasing coriolis force to form a whirlwind. The cyclone grew tighter in an invisible knot around the shredded shadow, trapping it and carrying it up toward the rooftop and out, flinging it into the vast emptiness. 
Exar Kun vanished with only a brief, curtailed scream. The Jedi Knights stood joined together for a final moment, relishing the shared Force. Then, in exhaustion and relief and triumph, they separated from each other. The unearthly glow dissipated around them. 
The image of the alien Master Vodo-Siosk Baas stared toward the ceiling, as if to catch a last glimpse of his conquered student, and then he too disappeared. 
With a wheezing cough as he expelled long-trapped air from his lungs and drew in a fresh breath, Master Skywalker groaned and sat up on the stone platform. 
"You've—done it!" Luke said, gaining strength with each lungful of cool, clean air. The new Jedi Knights surged toward him. "You have broken the bonds." 
With squeals of delight Jacen and Jaina ran to their Uncle Luke. He pulled them into his arms. They giggled and hugged him back. Luke Skywalker smiled out at his students, his face glowing with pride for the group of Jedi Knights he had trained. 
"Together," he said, "you make a formidable team indeed! Perhaps we need no longer fear the darkness." 

The systems hummed as they returned to life, charging up. Exar Kun had also been betrayed by his supposed partner, the warlord Ulic Qel-Droma. Now Han had betrayed Kyp. Master Skywalker had also betrayed him by failing to teach the appropriate lessons...appropriate defenses against Exar Kun. In his head the voice of the Sith Lord shouted for him to kill Han Solo, to destroy the enemy. To let his anger flow through and be strong. It overwhelmed Kyp. He squeezed his dark eyes shut, unable to watch as his hands gripped the control levers for launching the torpedo. He primed the system. The screens blinked with warning signals, which he disregarded. 
He needed to destroy something. He needed to kill those who had betrayed him. His fists gripped the firing handles. His thumbs rested on the launch buttons, squeezing, ready—
Squeezing—      
And then the haunting voice of Exar Kun rose to a wail in his mind, an utterly forlorn scream as if he were being torn out of this universe and exiled to another place entirely, where he could torment Kyp Durron no more. Kyp snapped backward in his control seat as if an invisible tow cable had been severed. His arms and head dangled like a puppet with suddenly snipped strings. The cool wind of freedom whistled through his mind and body. He blinked his eyes and shuddered with revulsion at what he had been about to do. 
The Millennium Falcon still gripped the Sun Crusher in its tractor beam. As Kyp saw the battered old ship, Han Solo's prize possession, he felt a tidal wave of despair. Kyp reached out to the energy torpedo controls and vehemently canceled the firing sequence. The plasma generator flicked and faded as the energy died away. Without the presence of Exar Kun inside him, Kyp felt isolated, suddenly in the free fall—but independent.
He opened the communication channel but couldn't form words for a few moments. His throat was dry. It felt as if he hadn't had anything to eat or drink in four thousand years. "Han," he croaked, and said louder, "Han this is Kyp! I..." He paused, not knowing what next to say—what else he could say. He hung his head and finally finished, "I surrender."