Something is hunting Darth Maul across the stars.
A presence he cannot touch, whispers that chase him from sleep. Answers seem to lay in a place he cannot go... at least, not alone. Before the Jedi and the Sith, before the Republic or the Empire, before the ancient Je'daii even, there were force users building temples and communing with the cosmic energies.
Somehow, even back then, there was a rule of two.
For Ben Kenobi, getting up each day is difficult enough, nevermind facing the past. He has one singular goal left to him: to be a guardian. A very distant guardian. Between the echoing emptiness of his cave and the war-torn memories that haunt him, he really just wants to be left alone.
Too bad for him that sleep-deprived sith lords aren't likely to take no for an answer.
[The long awaited sequel to Desertification is here!]
🔥🔥🔥 Read chapter 1 on Ao3, or scroll below the cut! Updates on Tuesdays.🔥🔥🔥
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Bridges are a beautiful weakness.
This one is massive. Natural stone that reaches across a wide span between stronghold and barren cliff. The architecture is sharp, angular, and modern, with little in the way of ornamentation. It is simply a functional pathway, the sole point of access for a utilitarian facility. The forces garrisoned here would have little trouble defending this chokepoint, under typical circumstances.
A zygerrian guard rises off the ground, clawing at their neck, while the next shoots wildly, hollering for backup. Blaster bolts curve off unnaturally into empty air. The first alien loses consciousness and slumps, still airborne. Their rifle clatters to the stone. The second turns and manages to flee two steps before they are swept sideways off the bridge like a leaf in a storm. They plummet, screaming, twenty stories down and into the lava below. With a lazy gesture, Darth Maul sends their strangulated comrade tumbling after them.
Lords of the Sith truly cannot qualify as ‘typical circumstances.’
He begins forward again as the next defenders rise to stop him. The formation they take is practiced, but he can see their quaking knees, feel their fear in the air.
If these fools truly wished to challenge him, they would be far better served by calling their forces back and turning the compound’s anti-ship cannons on its own infrastructure. Burying him alive might actually slow him down… but the cannons remain fixed on the sky, and figures in golden armor pour out onto the wide, windy bridge.
The price of such short sighted arrogance will be their lives.
Maul finishes churning through the first of the stronghold’s defense forces. He scatters a forward line of pikemen, shielding himself from blaster fire using stones torn from the structure itself. The occasional bolt slips past these rocks, but he simply bats those away with his saber.
The slaughter of their frontline gives the next group time to prepare. He is met with a more cohesive unit, backed by snipers. The cover fire does them little good. Maul ruins their formation by blitzing carelessly into the middle of it. His red blades lay into the panicking bodies around him and parry the long range shots back to their origins with impeccable soresu.
While he picks off the remaining snipers in their nests with a few force-propelled rocks, a new line of troops with energy bows come forward, firing in rapid sequence. It is… quaint, he thinks. Few have the dedication to make such a weapon into a formidable challenge, and these guards could not have matched the skill or power of a dathomirian archer on their worst day. Perhaps it is because these soldiers lack an edge of desperation -for food or survival- whenever they practice their aim?
Regardless, their skill or lack thereof is ultimately irrelevant against a man who can predict where they will fire.
Maul reaches the halfway point unimpeded, and the zygerrians finally switch tactics to something more innovative. The remaining guards part, and a set of twins emerge to close with him instead.
Each wields a halberd tipped by shining blue energy blades. They fight together, resplendent in fanged grins and fine armor. Their movements, obfuscated by swirls of shimmering gold cloth, complement each other with the skill born of what must have been decades spent training in tandem.
Facing such talent is the highlight of his efforts thus far, but even these warriors cannot match a sith. He tears their blades from them, and stabs each twin through the chest with their siblings' match. They die propped up on the hafts, slouching toward each other.
Blaster fire starts back up, and Maul returns to working through the rest of the chaff. The air begins to reek of desperation so strong it can be smelt over the sulfur. Acetone-bright and cloyingly sweet.
Quick as a lightning strike, an electro-whip cracks near his head with a sharp snap-fizz . A waft of ozone fills his nose, and the sith's forward momentum stutters to a halt. Resentful yellow eyes lock on the offender and he bares sharp, iron-stained teeth at them. The tall zygerrian only snarls in return.
Hatred rolls off Maul’s shoulders like heat waves in the force. That energy coalesces, and entropy descends on the whip-wielder. Their fur begins to dissolve as if they were being nibbled on by acid that simply does not stop, and the muscular form falls to the ground, writhing and screaming. They melt into naught but blackened ash under Maul’s baneful stare.
He turns to continue on, sunk too deep in the flow and lust of combat to examine the demise any further.
Slaves are thrown at him next, driven out onto the bridge as his assault nears the stronghold's three-story double doors. An effort he hesitates to call a 'tactic'. Half of the scrawny chattel fall to their bellies before he has even reached them, quivering and silent as they choose the potential wrath of their masters over certain death upon his blades.
Those who fight he kills as quickly as they come. Living and dead alike are left on the ground behind him, forgotten as soon as they pass out of sight.
More guards, with flashier armor and even finer weapons are next. Insignia and marks of esteem decorate their shoulders; the royal guard, here to die for their liege.
A sai cha strike with his saberstaff, and a head hits the ground before the body knows it is dead. Cho mok and cho mai, double-disarmed at the wrist. Their owner stumbles and falls off the bridge in shock, fixated on the remaining stumps. An angled shiak, down through the ribs just far enough to boil the blood in their lungs. Mou kei to the left leg, and another trips off the side to join the rest in immolation. Maul spins in a flourish of beautiful juyo at the gate.
Sai cha. Sai cha. Sai cha.
Then there are no more guards.
He pushes the double doors open with the force, and smiles to behold the reason he came here.
"Prince Trifenra," his croon echoes in the silence of the throne room, "I warned you not to cross me."
The lone zygerrian slams a button on the podium beside them, and the floor falls away with them on it. Maul gets to the edge in time to be stymied by a bulkhead closing the hole over. He sneers at it in annoyance, and starts cutting through with his lightsaber.
Twenty seconds, and he completes a circle of molten metal. A kick with his cybernetic foot sends the cutout falling, revealing a web of catwalks over a field of lava. He jumps.
The sith searches the platforms as he freefalls, but Trifenra is nowhere to be seen.
Maul lands on a catwalk with a heave of force to lessen the impact. His eyes drift closed, chest expanding as he breathes in, swaying in whichever direction feels right, focusing… focusing…
The force whispers to him that his prey is that way .
Maul jumps the rail and bounces between causeways, reaching the correct one and pelting down it. The feeling ends at an arch built into the rough stone walls. Thick metal doors, locked tight.
He snarls and starts cutting again, a small circle just large enough to admit him. The sith punches this cutout, and somersaults through without touching the cherry-red edges.
On the other side are holding cells. Row after row, multiple levels of hexagonal doors stretch out from the entry, each sealed by lambent red. Some are empty, some not. All the prisoners are exotic in some way.
Maul glances over the occupants as he passes, walking deeper into the facility. Trifenra is here, he can sense it.
The chamber widens into a large, multilevel room around a center platform. A dead end. The prince's possible hiding places have multiplied yet become limited at the same time. Maul's mouth quirks at the corner.
"Come out, come out. Wherever you are~," he sings in a sardonic drawl, like this is a game of hunter and prey between younglings.
The airscrubbers hum through the walls, creating a deep resonance just on the edge of hearing. Despite what must be a robust air recycling system, this room remains steeped in the scents of the enslaved; bitterness and despondency, melancholia and hate. A multispecies cacophony of emotions that make his sinuses itch.
He hears wheezing laughter, like the rattle of dry grass.
"Ssssweet, ssssweet, ssssinger…" calls a hoarse voice from one of the cells. The force twinges, a plucked string.
The source is… across the room, on a higher level. Maul can sense the force warping in on itself somewhere nearby. Curious, he leaps closer to it, up a story and over.
The cell on the left is marked as 214, and it contains a nautolan in a rare carmine color. She is heavily pregnant, and pressed as far to the left side of her cage as she can be.
The cell on the right is marked as 216. It holds a crab-like species he does not know, with a shell that looks like molten, living gold. It is quivering in the back of its container, in the rightmost corner.
In the center cell is a woman with wide pink eyes and an abundance of platinum hair. Her skin is white, like a palliduvan, but with an oily, iridescent sheen. She sits in the center of the room, naked, hugging her knees and shaking with that dry, rattling laugh.
Her pink gaze zeroes in on him, and her smile grows…and grows… and-
Lips spread like split meat as she grins from ear to ear, her teeth needle sharp. Conversely, her eyes are kind above the unnatural-looking maw.
"Blesssssed sssssinger~" she croons sweetly, "the lit-tle king plays a trick on you. Deceitful. Rude. Give him t-to me and I will blesss your path!"
She shouldn’t be able to move her jaw like she is, with those facial muscles severed. The force perhaps, magic or alchemy of some sort. He considers her, and the offer, mildly. "I am not easily tricked.”
She smiles still, and says nothing. Her presence feels like a tangle of razorwire, writhing and clingy.
"Hm.”
Maul walks away, stalking the metal floors and surveying the open room with thoughtful eyes. The prince is here somewhere, but there are enough strange projections from the prison's myriad occupants that it feels… cloudy.
A mirialan glares at him as he walks past their cage. The man floats a foot above his bed, rail-thin and cross legged.
A dry-looking quarren ignores him in turn, crying weakly into their hands.
He laps the room, and finds himself at the center of this fusion of zygerrian and modern architecture. A control panel sits on a dias, with a map of the cell block and various monitoring systems running.
"Hm!" he comments, "How convenient."
He taps the icon for cell 216 and tells it to open.
The sound of a ray shield powering down is shortly followed by more dry, wheezing laughter. He turns to see the woman step into freedom and launch herself across the room, trailing yards of platinum hair.
She lands in front of 107, and presses herself as close to the ray shield as one could be without burning.
"Knoc-kk knnnock!" she croaks.
The cell's occupant shrieks, falling back in their terror, but then scrambles to the shield again to yell up at him. They appear to be a salenga, but something… something is off. Maul squints, trying to pinpoint-
"I will pay you whatever you want! Anything!"
He cocks his head. Curious. How would a slave pay-
Oh. Interesting.
"Put her back in her cell and I will make you royalty! I swear it!"
The unnaturally white creature hisses, no longer laughing.
It is Maul who chuckles, walking to the edge of the center platform and clasping his hands behind his back. "A marriage proposal is it, Prince Trifenra? Now that is a… curious bribe."
He waits for the hope to glimmer in their eyes, then waves a hand in a grand gesture. The console registers a command from a finger press that is not there, and obeys it.
All of the cells open.
The salenga shrieks again, and melts into a clawdite changeling as they zip out and go streaking away. They make it all of three strides before disappearing under shimmering hair and vengeful pink eyes.
The next few minutes involve teeth, tearing, and unhinged sobbing. Maul watches for a moment as dozens of aliens flee on either side of him for the exit, then grows bored and turns to his comm. Dryden's secretary answers for him, a softly spoken pantoran with a penchant for ancient art.
"Hello sir. My apologies, Mr. Vos is in a meeting at the moment. Should I get him for you, or can I take a message?" Sochu asks.
Maul waves off the first. "Simply inform him that the treachery has been dealt with, and he has my permission to begin renegotiating with the other offer."
"Very good, sir. Anything else I can do for you?"
"Mmno," Maul says and hangs up.
His timing is good. The room has cleared and the strange woman is levitating up to the central platform, slathered in blood all down her front. Something wet and purple is cupped in her palms. She lands daintily, and he raises a brow.
"Ssssinger, c-c-clever son~ You figurrrred out the trick-k, denied the trick-ksster. Gave him to us ," she smiles sweetly, too many teeth in her mouth.
Maul hums, watchful.
"A gift!" she declares, and holds out… it’s a liver, or part of one.
He accepts it, amused, with the smallest of bows. “My thanks.”
The woman giggles like rotten wind chimes and turns to leap off the platform. She lands below and goes padding toward the lava flows, leaving a trail of red footprints smeared by passing hair in her wake.
Maul considers the slick bulk of the organ in his hand. Dense, warm, and evenly toned purple. He holds it up and gives it a sniff. It smells healthy- clean blooded and rich, and the fight did have him feeling peckish.
"Mm… waste not, I suppose.”
He chooses a corner and slides his teeth in. The woman’s sharp, clinging darkness in the force gives a final twist and melts away. Maul chews thoughtfully on his way out of the compound, disregarding the blood that drips off his chin. His robes are already too stained for a bit more to matter.
