“Maybe I’ll stay where I am,” Denis offered weakly, producing a grim smile from Bell. Even in the face of such peril, everyday folk like the attendant still amazed him, using humor—no matter how dark—to draw strength. If Denis could joke in the face of such uncertainty, he could fight a bunch of cowards like the Nihil.

No, Bell, he thought to himself, you can do better than that. You will fight them off and you will win.

Lightsaber in hand, Bell Zettifar waited for the inevitable.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The fair gates

This was his fault. All of it. Not the fact that he had been caught with his pants down—quite literally as it happened. No, it was worse than that. Elzar Mann had been so full of himself, so supremely arrogant, that he had believed, really believed, that the disaster the Force had deigned to show him had been averted by his arrival on Valo, as if his mere presence had been enough to stop death running amok.

His feet pounded on the ground as he raced into the fair, his senses assaulted by the wall of sound that hit the park, smashing glass and filling the air with a shrieking, discordant scream. Elzar staggered, teeth gritted, his hands clamped over his ears, convinced for a second that his eardrums had burst. If only. That would have been a blessed relief. The noise was absolute, bouncing off the wrecked buildings, just as the Nihil wanted. They had robbed their victims of sight and smell with the war-cloud and now were completing the disorientation, flooding the smog with white noise.

Elzar let go of his ears, trying to center himself amid the cacophony, calling upon the methods he’d been taught as a youngling.

Focus on the planet beneath your feet. Focus on the gravity holding you in place, grounding you, connecting you to one moment in time and space. One moment. One moment. One …

He felt himself falling, not to the ground, but back into the terrible future he’d glimpsed on the Starlight Beacon, the vision echoing from the depths of his mind. The mutilations. The terror. The world gone mad.

And not just any world. This world. Valo. He had been given a vision of this very moment, the noise and the chaos, and what had he done? Kidded himself that he could solve it all on his own, the brilliant Elzar Mann: iconoclast, trailblazer … idiot!

He would never forgive himself. Never allow himself a moment of peace. He didn’t deserve it. All this blood, all this terror, was on his hands, and it would never wash away.