In his thoughts, his Master spoke to him: Imagine your trail, and the Force will open it.

Backing out of the pinnacle’s meager shadow, he deliberately showed himself for an instant before commencing another upward slalom. Blaster bolts dogged his churning footsteps, then caught him in the same calf—and in the right shoulder. This time he engulfed the pain, and used it to fuel his mounting anger. But Meltch had to be wondering why his prey wasn’t slowing down or accepting defeat. So Maul stumbled before resuming his pace. A climb of some four hundred meters brought him just short of the valley rim, where water and wind had created a maze of spires and pinnacles.How simple it would be to soar through them, leaving scarcely an imprint of my boots. But not here, not now; not in the profane world.

Well-aimed bolts caromed and ricocheted from the spires, filling the air with particulate debris. Maul turned once to return fire, missing wildly, as he should. The shooting stopped as he threaded his way deeper into the stony labyrinth, edging through tight passages, crawling through others, leaping narrow chasms. With the rim in sight, he began to formulate a plan for catching his pursuers unaware. Meltch would be harder to fool than the Rodians. By now the Mandalorian knew all of Maul’s tricks, and indeed was responsible for his learning some of them. But Maul had learned some of Meltch’s tricks that the human hadn’t meant to teach, and was counting on the fact that the Mandalorian would send the Rodians to outflank him, while he himself continued to hound Maul from behind.

Emerging from the spires, he crouched for a moment in the whistling silence. At the head of the valley loomed a snow-capped conical mountain, lording over all it surveyed, a sole cloud wafting from its summit like a lavender banner. Cautiously, Maul ascended to the top of the slope, only to spy Meltch not 50 meters in front of him, standing with his back to a jagged rend in the broken terrain. How Meltch had gotten past him, Maul couldn’t guess. Some Death Watch technique, he supposed. But Maul wasn’t supposed to be able to see him, so he steeled himself and advanced into the pain. Meltch’s first bolt struck him in the right shoulder, spinning him partway around, but Maul completed the turn of his own volition and began a mad dash for the edge of the snaking crevasse. With near-misses from the Mandlorian’s blaster prodding him forward, he realized suddenly that his eyes had deceived him. More gaping than it had appeared from his earlier vantage, the chasm should have proved an impossible leap for a fifteen-year-old Zabrak—even for one who had spent almost a decade in combat training. Meltch would expect him to stop short of the edge and surrender, but instead he quickened his pace and jumped, arms and legs pumping as if to grant him greater momentum.

He allowed himself to slam into the far wall, using the Force to cushion the impact and hooking his hands over an outcropping a few meters below the rim. Having found a narrower gap, Meltch and the Rodians weren’t long in reaching him, gathering in their supposed invisibility on the rim to gaze down at him. Maul had himself convinced that his rash move—his leap of faith—had earned him the respect of his fellow warriors. But only until they began to taunt him by kicking debris from the rim in the hope that Maul would lose his grip and plunge to an accidental death.

Scarcely the first under the Mando’s watch.

Anger consumed Maul. How much longer would he be required to conceal his real abilities, to be made to seem mediocre—like some still struggling neophyte—when he was so much more?

Calling on the Force again, he launched himself from the chasm, somersaulting and half-twisting in mid-air, so that when his boots struck the resilient ground he was facing the backs of his hunters with his blaster in hand. By the time the three of them whirled—Meltch’s lined face contorted in bafflement—Maul was already triggering bolts, as if firing at beings he couldn’t see but knew to be in front of him.

Still trusting in the suits, they scattered, shooting blindly on the run. Though not a bolt found Maul, the Force guided his to their targets, and each pained outcry elated him. The blaster was almost depleted when Meltch deactivated his suit and shouted for Maul to stand down. But Maul ignored him. Swept up in the grip of sadistic delight, he kept firing, the dark side writhing through him like an aggrieved serpent.And one day he would be able to unleash bolts of electricity from his fingertips!

Above him, cutting through the reports of the overheated blaster and the Mando’s calls for capitulation, an amplified voice Maul had known since childhood ordered him to cease fire.

Around the smoothed top of a low, bone-dry hill, an airspeeder came into view, settling into levitation mode as it put down at the edge of the chasm, a short but powerfully built Falleen seated at the controls. Aiming a glance at Meltch and the now-visible Rodians, the reptilian biped leapt from the speeder and approached Maul, snatching the blaster from his grip and tossing it aside.

“What were you thinking?” Trezza said under his breath.

Meltch had holstered his weapon and was gazing into the dark chasm, at the spot where Maul had seemingly been hanging on for dear life. When he swung around his eyes were narrowed in suspicion.

“How did you—?”

“I pushed off from a ledge,” Maul said.

Meltch took a second look and scowled. Turning back to Maul, he said, “How did you manage to target us?”

“The suits were glitched. They couldn’t decide how to blend you into the background.”

Meltch glanced to the Rodians, who shook their heads. Furious, then, he stormed past Trezza. Maul sensed the punch coming long before the Mando put his weight behind it. Standing still, he turned his head in the direction of the gauntleted blow and managed to remain on his feet. Spitting blood to the ground, he glared at the Mando.

Meltch snorted and offered up his square chin. “Go ahead, Maul, since you seem bent on making this personal.”

“You’ve made it personal for two years.”

“To push you to your limits,” Meltch said. “To make you a warrior.” Meltch held Maul’s yellow-eyed gaze. “Personal or professional. You can’t have it both ways.”

A head shorter than both Maul or Meltch, Trezza stepped between them. It was never a good sign when a Falleen took on color, and Trezza’s face was shifting through the spectrum.

“Enough,” he said. “No points for either side.”

Meltch scoffed. “He’ll never make the grade, Trezza. Not until he decides to be honest with us. Until then, we’re wasting our time.”