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Luke opened his eyes. “All right,” he said. “What do we still need?”

“Um, it’s not like we’re out of trouble right now—”

“You mean the stormtroopers outside the door?” Luke hefted his lightsaber. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“No, actually, I was talking about being lost somewhere inside an active volcano, and—”

“We’re not lost.”

“We’re not?”

“No.”

“Um, okay.” From past experience, Nick could assume that when a Jedi said something straight out and simple like that, he could usually be taken at his word. “The other problem is that this whole place is lined with meltmassif—remember what happened over at the Shadow Throne? Any second now, Blackhole’s gonna shock the snot out of all of us, and—”

“He won’t.”

“What makes you—”

“Nick,” Luke said, “you worry too much.”

He closed his eyes again, and the slimy black meltmassif goo began to flow across his body … but instead of dripping down, it flowed forward, thickening across Luke’s chest, then it separated itself from him altogether, pooling into a floating sphere like mercury in free fall. Thinning tendrils flowed into the sphere from Luke’s pants, and sleeves, and from the ends of his hair, as well as away from the floor around his legs, so that in only a moment, he could stand on dry, bare floor, and his clothes and face and hair were all entirely clean, and the ball of liquid meltmassif hovering in front of him was the size of his doubled fists.

“Blackhole’s ‘treatment’ has had some side effects he probably didn’t plan on,” Luke said.

“I’m guessing. Can you, like, make it into stuff and make it shock people and everything, like he does?”

Luke shook his head. “I don’t think he actually does that stuff either—it’s more like he’s controlling something that does it, if you get what I’m saying.”

“Sounds like his style; doing it himself would be too much like work.” Nick nodded at the fallen Pawns. “What about these types?”

Luke frowned around the room at them. Not one had moved. Not one had made a sound. He lifted a hand as if he were reaching for a handful of air. He took a deep breath, and his eyes drifted shut. He looked like something was hurting. His head, maybe.

Maybe his heart.

“Nick …” Luke said, barely above a whisper. “Nick, they’re dead. They’re all dead.”

Nick felt like something had stabbed him.

“They’re dead,” Luke repeated numbly. “And I killed them.”

CRONAL LET HIS CONSCIOUSNESS SLIP ASIDE FROM THE fading sparks of his fallen Pawns—they had outlived their usefulness anyway. He let his mind slide back down into the harmonics of the crystalline web along his nerves, until once again he could touch the structure of the meltmassif that lined the entire interior of his volcanic dome, and brought his mind into resonance with the alien slave minds who controlled the rock. He could sense their baffled frustration and pain as they tried to extend themselves into the liquefied meltmassif in Skywalker’s chamber, and he could feel the countervailing pressure of Skywalker’s Force-empowered will.

The Jedi had somehow learned to manipulate meltmassif using only the Force!

This did not dismay Cronal, however; on the contrary, it instantly transformed his frustration and doubt into unalloyed delight. A wonderful talent! It meant that once Cronal took over Skywalker’s body, he’d no longer have need of the Sunset Crown.

With Skywalker’s body—and his unparalleled connection to the Force—to complement Cronal’s unparalleled knowledge of Sith alchemy and the unique properties of meltmassif, he would indeed rule the galaxy.

He could, should he choose, become the galaxy.

Every living thing would answer to his will …

All that remained was to permanently impose his will upon Skywalker, though the boy had shown an astonishing gift for defying anyone’s plans for him—even plans enforced by the incalculable power of Cronal’s Darksight. That pesky Jedi training of his!

Cronal reached out through Darksight, his anger mounting, searching for release … and found the last thing he would have expected: another presence, one very near.