Xash stepped back, obediently waiting to deliver the killing blow.
The lightsaber slipped from Dray’s numb fingers and deactivated. He could not find his breath. His heart skipped, then faltered, and then stopped.
His anger grew stronger.
He inwardly called to the dark storm, begged for its providence. The kind mistress with the voice of whispery coils answered him. He could feel her silken breath tickle his ear.
Dray opened himself to the blinding rage, always seething like a second skin under his flesh. The hate swirled to a single-minded maelstrom of rage.
And the rage made him powerful.
His fingertips jerked outward and his fury erupted as crackling bolts of power. Force lightning streaked toward Sindra, enveloping her in a snare of electrical energy.
She cried out from depths of her being and sunk to the ground as spidery lances snapped voraciously around her.
Dray’s heart jumped to life, the chilling sensation turned to fire, and he was free.
Xash had been watching in shock as his sister writhed in the dirt, so he was late in delivering the strike that a moment ago would have beheaded Dray.
It would be his final mistake.
Dray dropped flat on his back to dodge Xash’s belated assault. As the high swing passed harmlessly above, Dray twisted his head around and gestured at his attacker.
Xash flew nearly a hundred feet before slamming into the trunk of a huge arcosia tree with a resounding crunch. The body slid to the ground and, if there was any doubt from the impact, Sindra’s shriek told Dray all he needed to know. The uncanny link all twins seemed to share had been severed like a string. Xash was dead.
Renewed strength coursed through Dray, power given life by the anger that still burned within. He needed only flick his wrist and the golden saber flew to him, igniting with a joyous burst.
Four quick strides brought him to Sindra and he watched impassively as her body continued to convulse. Tiny electric charges crackled through her clouded eyes, across the cavern of her open mouth, and dancing down the rest of her body.
Dray raised the saber to finish it.
A voice, strong and sure, demanded to be heard. Tyrrahl… A Jedi does not kill an unarmed foe.
The velvet whisper answered and Dray echoed the words: “True.”
He brought the blade down and Sindra’s laughter finally stopped.
“But I am no longer a Jedi.”
The breeze died away and then there was only silence.
Dray turned from the carnage and saw Nova’s face - a mask of absolute horror. He had a resurgence of pain in his heart for a moment but it disappeared as quickly as it arrived.
The rage was also gone, scattered like dust in a hurricane. He was just Dray, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. He was tired, hurt, and aching all over.
But there was something else, too. Something he had not felt in a long time.
Shame.
He opened his mouth to explain, to say something, but Nova was already sprinting away into the forest. He started to give chase, then realized he was too weak. Exhaustion had set in with frightening speed.
Drained physically and emotionally, Dray slipped down to his knees. He glanced warily at the bodies, at the bloodshed he had wrought. The twins shouldn’t have come here, he rationalized, and the girl is not my responsibility.
That tingling whisper became his own voice. Of course not. Why bother going after her?
“Why?” he asked again, this time aloud.
He received no answer.
Dray awoke from the nightmare screaming. A thin film of sweat covered his body and he shivered in the crisp night air.
The nightmare was all too familiar. His failure at Tyrrahl’s test… The Citadel of Shadows.
No.
Dray refused to remember the incident. He needed to think of something else. He shut his eyes tightly.
And found himself staring into her face.
Cayli.
It was the day she learned of his betrayal. She did not believe it at first, refusing even after she saw Threem’s corpse. It had to be a mistake, she said. Dray could never have fallen from the light. Not Dray. He was the strongest of all. Tyrrahl had predicted great things of every student he trained, but Dray… Dray was special.
It was not until she stood at the door of his quarters that she finally accepted the truth. For those trained in the Force, the stench of the dark side was one that could not be washed off or masked with fragrances. Dray practically exuded the sickly sweet scent from his pores.
Cayli was silent. The tears in her eyes cut deeper than any word ever could. It opened up a wound within Dray’s soul, and there wasn’t the tidy cauterization of an injury delivered by a lightsaber.
She was gone before… Before what? he wondered, before he could explain?
There was no explanation that would satisfy her. He had chosen his path of his own free will.