The Fallen Star (Star Wars: The High Republic)

by Claudia Gray

If a full Jedi Knight had been asking questions like this, Bell might’ve been too intimidated to speak openly. Grief wasn’t an emotion the Jedi were meant to dwell upon. But Burryaga was a fellow apprentice. Sure, he was significantly older, but still, in Wookiee terms, just past adolescence. They were peers. It was possible to admit things to a peer that could never be comfortably said to a Master. “From the moment I became Loden Greatstorm’s Padawan, he was more than just my teacher.” Bell paced slowly along the observation deck walkway, staring at the stars and the half circle of Eiram’s surface below. “He was the ultimate ideal of a Jedi. At least, he was to me.” Burryaga agreed. Loden Greatstorm had been among the noblest, most outstanding Jedi Masters of his generation. (Burryaga, aging as a Wookiee did, could assess several human generations with ease.) His death was a loss to the entire Order—but, he gently added, to Bell most of all. “I thought he was dead, but he wasn’t. Master Loden was alive, in Nihil captivity, suffering—so terribly—” Bell’s voice caught. He swallowed hard. “And it wasn’t like I didn’t sense him! But I told myself it was grief. They told me it was just grief, or a sense of him through his new communion with the Force. Instead it was him calling for help that never came. I could have saved him. I didn’t.” Burryaga stopped him there with a low growl. There was no way to know what Bell might or might not have been able to do, or even what the Ord...