During his long career as one of the Outer Rim's most dangerous bounty hunters, Cad Bane had performed a number of heists for a number of clients – and sometimes on his own initiative, when intel had fallen into his lap about a particularly juicy score. He had robbed banks, private vaults, and the fortresses of warlords, and while he hadn't always gotten away with what he'd come to acquire, he had always made it out alive. Admittedly, not all of his crews could say the same – something he had somehow forgotten to mention to the blokes he'd recruited for this particular mission.
The first hurdle to clear was actually making it to Perlia. Usually, that wouldn't be too difficult, but despite its sudden importance to galactic affairs, the planet still saw very little traffic. Every incoming ship was monitored closely as a result. Given how quickly Imperial Intelligence was rebuilding its networks in the Outer Rim, pretending to be tourists was unlikely to get them far.
The second approach, sneaking in using stealth, might still be viable. But nobody knew what the Invincible's sensors were capable of. Bane had hoped to finish putting his crew together before the superdreadnought's return, but that hadn't happened – and he'd nearly killed the final member of the crew in a fit of rage upon finding out.
That left him with his final option, and the one he'd hoped to avoid using until much later : calling on Sidious' contact on the ground for help. And, to his credit, Dooku had delivered : they linked up with a ship from Serenno and hid among the cargo until the ship had landed, at which point they discreetly made their exit alongside the crew. They had to keep their heads down not to draw attention, especially since Serenno was a mostly Human-populated world, and of their quirky little group of murderers-for-hire, only Aurra Sing could pass as one.
But they were professionals, and they managed it easily enough. Now, they were out of the spaceport and aboard a rented speeder, flying toward the refugee town near the Sith Temple. They were careful to give the place a wide berth : security around it was high, as the Sith Lord was apparently worried about the Cartels sending infiltrators to punish the escaped slaves. Bane would have dismissed the idea as paranoia, except he himself had received several offers by the Hutts for precisely that kind of work. He'd refused them all, of course; not out of any moral objection, but because it was far too dangerous for the pay they'd offered.
They ditched the speeder on the side of the road, covering it with camo so it wouldn't be discovered until they returned to make their extraction, and began to trek through the woods on foot, keeping watch for any patrols. Bane could have sworn that, the closer to the Temple they got, the quieter the jungle became, and the more vicious the vegetation looked. After several hours, the four sentients reached the base of the Sith Temple.
From their current position, the building loomed over them, appearing even larger than it actually was. The temple's immediate surroundings were completely devoid of life in a radius of a dozen meters, as if the jungle knew better than to encroach upon the ancient structure. Bane could well understood why : he wasn't a superstitious being, but he could swear he felt the temple looking at him.
After checking once again that there was no sign of any Sith patrol or surveillance device, the Duros forced himself to cross the open space, the rest of his crew following. He raised a hand-held scanner and swept it around, grunting in satisfaction when it beeped, confirming they were at the correct location.
"There is supposed to be a secret passage here, which was discovered by a previous expedition," he said. "However, according to our intel, it can only be opened by a Force-sensitive. Sing ?"
The Palliduvan walked to the wall and pressed her hand against it, before closing her eyes. In her other hand, she was holding the device Sidious had sent to Bane, a thing of spiked brass engraved with tiny script which was supposed to be the Sith equivalent of a skeleton key. As Sing did whatever it was Force users were supposed to do with it, the device started spinning around in her palm, and emit a sound that made Bane's teeth ache.
He was about to tell Sing to turn it off when a slab of stone swung aside, revealing a passage into absolute blackness. Sing staggered back, shaking her head. It was difficult to tell with the Palliduvan, but she looked even paler than usual.
"Nicely done," said Bane. "You alright to continue ?"
If she wasn't – if she was going to be a burden – then Bane would have to shoot her. They couldn't leave her behind and risk having her be discovered, and the tunnels were going to be dangerous enough without dragging dead weight along. It'd be a shame to lose her this early in the job, but on the other hand, that would be one less person to share Sidious' cash with.
"I'm fine," the Palliduvan replied, and Bane surreptitiously took his hand away from his pistol. "I just … felt the temple for a bit. It's not exactly a happy place."
"Big surprise there," beeped Todo-360, the techno-service droid sitting on his usual perch on Bane's shoulders. The rest of the crew gave weak chuckles to the admittedly poor joke.
"Let's get in," said Bane, and they all pulled out lightsticks before filing into the opening.
Inside, the tunnel was a tight corridor, just large enough for one person to walk through comfortably. There were no side passages or intersections, which had the advantage of making their advance simple – or so it seemed at first. After a couple of hours of walking, Bane's wrist-computer insisted they were going in circle, and looking at the three-dimensional map it had built of their advance so far, the Duros found it hard to argue – except for the fact that they hadn't passed any of the marks they'd left in their wake.
"I had heard legends that space could be warped in places strong in the Dark Side, but I didn't think that was actually true," grumbled Belok after Bane pointed this out to the rest of the group.
Renai Belok was a Twi'lek, and had, once upon a time, been counted among the foremost minds of the Core when it came to archaeology. Unfortunately for him, his spending habits had driven him to traffic in the same kind of artefacts he was studying, and upon being exposed, he'd been forced to flee to the Outer Rim, where he had put his skills and knowledge to use as a grave-robber, as well as historian-for-hire for warlords who wanted to know the history of the trophies and treasures they'd taken from their latest victims.
Bane and Sing had caught him leaving a brothel, after having spent the last of his credits on a week of debauchery and indulgence. It had taken him several seconds to recognize Bane, but once he did, he'd sobered up quickly, and devoted his full attention to the offer.
Though Belok was armed – you didn't survive long on the Rim if you didn't visibly carry a weapon at all times – Bane hadn't recruited him for his skill with a blaster, which was mediocre at best. No, the Twi'lek was here because the bounty hunter wasn't going to enter a Sith Temple without the closest thing to an expert he could get. And even if Belok's knowledge fell short, the ex-archaeologist still knew his way around ancient tombs filled with traps by their builders.
"Do you know a method to circumvent this spatial anomaly and reach our destination faster ?" asked Mili, the last member of their group (not taking into account Todo-360 – but then, Todo didn't get a share of the job's payout).
Mili was a combat droid. If you believed the stories, it was the result of a Trade Federation secret weapon project which had broken free of its restraints and slaughtered the entire research team before disappearing into the Outer Rim. Bane doubted that was the truth, but there was no denying Mili's skills with the blasters built into its wrists.
Both Belok and Mili had refused to join the crew at first once they had been told what the job was. The Twi'lek especially had been vocal in his refusal, ranting about how many others had tried to break into the Lord of Terror's vault, only to never return – and that had been before the Sith Lord had come back with his army and started living in the Sith Temple above the vault again.
But, once Bane had told them how much they were getting paid for the job, they had changed their minds. Self-preservation was a fine thing, but you didn't get the kind of reputation these two had on the Outer Rim without some powerful greed serving as motivation as well.
"Are you crazy ? Of course not," replied Belok. "If such a method even exists, I doubt anybody but Cain himself would know of it. All we can do is keep walking and hope we get to our destination eventually. Well, I guess we could turn back and hope the way out is still the same as the way in, but I at least didn't come this far to give up now."
"No one is going back until we've got what we came for," Bane cut in. "Now keep moving and stay alert."
They walked for another half-hour before the passage reached a vast chamber. Several more tunnels led to the room, some leading to stairs going up and down, others disappearing in snaking tunnels similar to the one they had exited from. All eyes, however, were drawn to the other side of the room, where a stone arch rose, leading into a long, straight corridor.
"Is it just me," asked Belok, "or is it getting colder in here ?"
"I am not registering any decrease in temperature," said Mili.
But the Twi'lek was right, thought Bane, no matter what the droid's sensors claimed. It was getting colder, and the cold was coming from beyond the arch. Because of course it was. Kriffing Sith sorcerous banthashit.
"Todo, Mili, any sign of life ?" he asked. Both droids answered negatively. "Then let's move before that changes."
"There's something written up here," called Belok as they got close the arch. "And that's weird : it looks like … yes, it's written in Galactic Basic, not in Sith. That dialect is thousands of years old, but there hasn't been much deviation in the language since then, though the script is faded from age."
"What does it say ?" Bane asked impatiently. He didn't want them to waste time, but it'd be stupid to disregard any potential clue to what awaited them further in.
"Give me a minute. As I said, it is faded." The Twi'lek brought up his light, pointing the beam at the characters. "It says … 'Turn back. No treasures wait for you beyond this point. No glory, no power, and no wealth. Only misery and torment lie ahead, the remnants of a darkness even the Lord of Terror could neither control nor destroy. Turn back, for your own good and that of this world, before it is too late.'"
"Really ?" the Duros bounty hunter laughed in the silence that followed. "That's it ? I expected more from the dreaded Lord of Terror than a childish fairy tale curse."
The rest of the crew chuckled too, hesitantly at first, but with growing force. Internally, Bane sighed in relief. Now was not the time for them to get cold feet.
"Mili, you're in front," he said to the combat droid. "Everyone, keep your eyes peeled."
Once past the arch, they finally started to find the kind of traps they had been expecting. In one section, razor-sharp blades swung from the ceiling like pendulums, requiring either a great mastery of the Force to stop them in their tracks, or the kind of processing power Mili was packing to determinate the precise timing of steps to cross. Further ahead, the floor was split up in blank tiles, with a single passage allowing to reach the other side without making spikes erupt from the ceiling with enough strength to pierce through armor – at least judging by the decaying remains strewn about the place.
It was while they were navigating that obstacle, the droids among them scanning the tiles to detect which ones were safe, that Sing paused and carefully reached out to one of the dessicated corpses, which looked to be centuries old at least, and pried a thin metallic tube from its grasp.
There was a crack-hiss, and a crimson light added its illumination to their lightsticks'.
"A lightsaber," Belok breathed. "And not a Jedi one, given its color. What's that doing down here ?"
"What do you think ?" snorted Bane. "Obviously it was left here by one of our predecessors."
"But it's red … It must have been left by a Sith from before the end of the New Sith Wars," mused the archaeologist, who was looking at the lightsaber with hungry gaze, only to turn his eyes away when Sing glared at him, turned the lightsaber off, and hung it from her belt.
That was a reasonable assumption, but Bane knew better, even though the galaxy had thought the Sith extinct for a thousand years before Darth Cain's return. Years ago, he'd been hired by a Zabrak to help him hunt down some Jedi Padawan in the Outer Rim, who had used the Force and wielded a red lightsaber. Then, some time later, he'd been contacted by Sidious, who was a Sith Lord in his own right, and hadn't been particularly subtle about hiding it – meaning, Bane knew, that he'd wanted the bounty hunter to know in order to dissuade the Duros from double-crossing him.
"If only we could search these without risking our lives by activating the traps," added the Twi'lek, looking at the decayed remains with a forlorn look. "We could probably make a lot of cash selling their possessions."
"We will make a lot more from the artefacts in the vault," replied Bane. "Don't get distracted by lesser prizes and stay focused on the job."
On and on this went, for nearly two hours. How all these traps were still functioning after so many centuries, Bane could only guess. According to Belok, such things were common in ancient sites : for some reasons, people from the Old Republic era and even before had been obsessed with making sure their tombs, vaults, and other hidden places could withstand the passage of time.
The deeper they went, the less corpses they found, until at last there was no trace that anyone had made it this far apart from the vault's owner. But, at last, they reached their destination : a large corridor, with metallic doors spread at regular intervals on both sides.
At last, thought Bane. They'd reached the actual vault of Darth Cain.
"Wait," said Belok suddenly, and everyone froze. The Twi'lek was pointing backward, eyes wide. "Look."
They turned back, and saw that the traps-filled corridor was gone. Instead, they could see the stone arch leading to the chamber were they had arrived after navigating the space-defying passage, marked with another warning in Basic.
"'This is your final warning'," Belok read aloud. "'One last chance to avoid your doom, granted by the Lord of Terror's mercy. Turn back, and leave. The stars are home to many treasures worth possessing, none of which reside in this prison of darkness'."
Again, there was a tense pause. And, again, it fell to Bane to break it :
"Now that's just being desperate," he chuckled. "Come on, folks. We're so close I can smell the credits already."
Slowly, still looking for traps, they advanced into the corridor. The ceiling was high – ten meters according to Todo's scan. Every angle was perfectly sculpted into the stone, without any trace of erosion. Red light was coming from veins of red crystal that ran on the walls between cells, glowing with pulsating light.
And it was cold, punishingly so. Mili still claimed that the temperature hadn't noticeably changed beyond what was to be expected from how deep beneath the surface of Perlia they were, and none of their breaths were turning into fog, but all of the meat-bags in the group were shivering. Bane tried very hard not to think about what that meant.
There were sigils carved over every cell, still clear despite the passage of millennia. Bane didn't know the language, but there was something about the way the symbols flowed into each other that made his spine crawl.
"Now that," said Belok looking at the sigils, "is ancient Sith."
"Can you translate it ?" asked Sing.
"Of course I can !" replied the disgraced archaeologist, sounding almost outraged at the question. "It's not that complicated a language, no matter what these fearful, hidebound morons at the institute may claim. This one, for instance, says something like 'Essence of the Beast of the Whisperhead Mountains'."
"That sounds delightful," deadpanned Mili.
"Sith Lords are a bunch of melodramatic bastards," grunted Bane. "Sing, can you open it ?"
There was nothing special about this door compared to the rest as far as the bounty hunter could tell, but they had to start somewhere. And, presumably, the most dangerous artefacts would be deeper in the vault, if only because the Lord of Terror had obtained them later in his career.
"I'm going to try," replied the Palladian, pulling out the skeleton key from her pocket and laying a hand on the metal door. Once again, Bane was struck by the complete absence of rust on the panel, and he realized that this wasn't any metal he recognized. Where the kriff had Cain found the stuff ?
It took several minutes before Sing managed it, and by the time the cell's door rose up, she looked even paler than usual. This was clearly taking a toll on her, and while Bane had no issue with the Palladian draining herself dry, it did mean they'd only be able to access a limited number of cells.
Beyond the door, the cell was a small octagonal space, barely three meters wide. The walls were covered in carved sigils that vaguely resembled the ones above the cells, but rough, and without order. This reminded Bane of nothing more than an asylum's room, where the inmate had been given free reign to express their inner madness upon their surroundings.
Apart from the carvings, there were two things of note in the room. The first was a pile of bones bundled against the far wall of the cell, looking older than any of the remains they'd passed on their way to the vault. Their original owner seemed to have been humanoid, but with horns, claws and spikes that Bane couldn't link with any species he'd encountered before. Far more interesting, however, was the pedestal of black metal in the middle of the room, atop which rested a small, pyramid-shaped object of red crystal and golden armatures.
"That's a Sith Holocron," breathed Belok. "These are incredibly valuable, because the Jedi confiscate all the ones they find."
"I know what it is," said Bane. "That's our paycheck."
Among the instructions Sidious had given Bane was that such artefacts took absolute priority. Curious, the bounty hunter had done some digging, and learned why : these devices were repositories of knowledge, created by Force users – both Sith and Jedi – to store their lore for future generations. They were also supposedly haunted by some kind of Force ghost, a copy of their creator who served as interface between the user and the information contained within them.
Bane didn't have any interest in those ancient secrets himself; if they were that valuable, then the Sith wouldn't have lost the war to the Jedi. But Sidious was willing to pay a lot of credits for the object, and it was small enough that carrying it outside wouldn't be a problem.
"Check the room for traps," Bane ordered, and the group fanned out carefully, checking every centimeter of the cell's freezing floor.
No trap. Nothing. In the end, his patience running out, Bane walked to the plinth and gingerly picked up the Holocron, his every sense straining for any sign of danger. Yet still, nothing happened.
He pocketed the priceless artefact. For some reason, it felt a lot heavier once his gloved fingers left it.
"Let's move on to the next cell," he said, feeling more nervous than he cared to admit.
This was going too well. Something had killed all the people whose bones they had trodden on outside this cell. The longer they went without whatever it was showing up, the tenser the bounty hunter became, and so did the rest of his crew.
He was halfway to the next door when he realized Sing hadn't followed and was still inside the first cell. He went back, and found her staring at the bones, her back turned to him.
"Sing ?" he called out, already drawing his blaster. "What's wrong ? Get out of here, we need you to open the next cell."
Slowly, she turned to face him. The lines on her face were shifting, moving like bulging veins across her pallid skin. She smiled, showing far too many pointed teeth.
"Samus," she said, her voice several octaves deeper than Bane ever remembered hearing it. "Samus is here."
Without hesitation, Bane fired, only for his blaster bolt to be deflected by the crimson lightsaber that was suddenly in Sing's hand.
"She's gone crazy !" he shouted as he back-pedalled, still firing as he went, trying to put as much distance between himself and the lightsaber-wielding madwoman as possible.
"Samus is all around you !" she screamed as she ran out of the cell, with such volume that Bane nearly stumbled, feeling as if he'd just been punched in the chest. "Samus is the man besides you ! Look out ! Look out !"
"What the -" began Belok, before his words turned into a gurgle as he was gutted by a single lightsaber strike. He fell to the ground, clutching at his incinerated insides for a few seconds before his brain caught up with the rest of his body and realized he was dead.
Mili opened fire on full auto with all of its weapons. Not every blaster bolt was deflected : several hit the Palladian, burning through cloth and flesh without slowing her down, and Bane watched as one hit her in the eye, throwing her head back and turning the eye into crimson vapor. But she only paused for a second before shaking her head, still laughing madly, and leaping toward the combat droid at an impossible speed.
Mili tried to escape, but was hacked to pieces before it could get out of range of the madwoman's lightsaber. Cursing in every language he knew, Bane threw a squealing Todo-360 deeper into the vault, before pressing a button on his vambrace. Immediately, the techno-service droid started emitting a painfully loud shriek. The noise drew Sing's (or whatever was wearing her skin now) attention, and she stalked toward its source, her empty eye socket glowing with eldritch light.
"Samus !" she howled as she ripped the small droid to pieces. "It means the end and the death ! Samus will gnaw upon your bones !"
While she was distracted, Bane turned and ran without hesitation. It was a shame about Todo-360, but he could always get another droid; it wouldn't be the first time he had done so, and the pay for this job more than covered the cost of buying a replacement and outfitting it with the same array of illegal modifications. As for Sidious, well, he would have to be satisfied with the single Holocron Bane was carrying.
That was, of course, assuming Bane managed to make it out, which he was honest enough with himself to know wasn't all that likely. But if he had let something like the odds discourage him, he would have died years ago.
He made it halfway to the tunnel when his instincts screamed at him, and he threw himself to the side just in time to avoid being cut to ribbons by a flying lightsaber. He turned, thinking to shoot Sing while she was weaponless, only for the plasma blade to fly back into her hand. Cursing, the Duros jumped into the nearest opening in the wall. It wasn't the one the group had arrived through, but right now, he didn't care.
All he cared about was running away as fast as he could, and keep an eye out for any opportunity to escape his former crewmate. It wasn't the first time that had happened, though never before had one of his allies been driven mad by Sith sorcery.
***
In the years since their escape from Korriban, Iskandar Khayon had been asked many times just why it was that he consorted with an alien like Nefertari. Rarely were such questions asked in the Twi'lek's presence, and never more than once. When he deigned to answer with words rather than a sneer or open violence, the Pureblood would explain that his companion was a great fighter, a dedicated follower of the Dark Side, and that they had both sharpened each other's skills.
All of which were true, but there were other benefits, which weren't suitable to discuss in polite company – or, well, civil company, as Iskandar held precious little illusion about the nature of most of his compatriots, even if the Cainite Sith were a step up from the rest of the Empire in that regard, among many others.
On a completely unrelated subject, Nefertari had been feeling particularly frisky today, and had all but dragged him into the Temple's lower sections (though, if he had to be honest, Iskandar would admit he hadn't fought her very hard : his companion could be remarkably persuasive when the mood took her). Nobody went there, apart from the regular armed patrols tasked with ensuring nothing had broken out of the vault and was making its way up the Temple – which, admittedly, was more a way to punish low-performing squads than a necessary duty, given nothing had gone out in over three millennia.
All in all, the evening was off to a promising start when the two of them sensed someone getting closer, fast. To call Nefertari's expression murderous at the interruption would have been a gross understatement, and Iskandar wasn't happy about it himself.
A Duros ran out into view, panting and brandishing a blaster. Before Iskandar could say or do anything, Nefertari leapt at him, her two lightsabers igniting. From the way he immediately reacted to the threat, moving out of the way of the acolyte's first strike, it was clear that the Duros was an experienced killer. But he was exhausted from running through the maze of ever-shifting corridors that stretched beneath the Sith Temple, steeped in the emanations of all the Dark artefacts locked away in the Lord of Terror's vault.
In that condition, that he lasted all of five seconds against Nefertari before she severed both his hands at the wrist was admirable. Still, even if he had been in top form, the outcome would never have been in doubt. Nefertari had survived the Academy on Korriban as a Twi'lek female, and walked away from the battle of Molech : it would take more than an alien gunslinger to defeat her.
Before she could sever her enemy's head with her lightsabers, Iskandar held out his hand and stopped her with a pull of telekinesis, before pressing on the Duros' throat with an invisible grip until he fell unconscious – which, given the agony of having suddenly lost his hands, was probably a mercy.
"Darth Cain will want to interrogate him," he told Nefertari when she glared at him for interrupting her fun.
The black-skinned Twi'lek opened her mouth to berate him, but was interrupted by the sound of something approaching from the same passage the Duros had emerged from.
A white-skinned humanoid wielding a red lightsaber appeared, coming to a dead stop when she saw the two Sith acolytes. She seemed to belong to one of the countless Near-Human species of the galaxy, but it was hard to tell with the changes that had recently been wrought upon her form. A crown of white horns were growing out of her skull, piercing the skin and adding blood to the twisting tattooed lines that covered her face. Her left eye was gone, replaced by a ghost-light that cast no illumination, only shadows.
More importantly, the two Sith acolytes could feel the dark aura radiating from her. A malign, ancient presence, foreign to the body it puppeteered, which had completely crushed the mind of whoever the poor fool had once been.
"Samus is here !" the possessed bellowed.
"Well, that answers the question of which of Darth Cain's trophies is responsible for this mess," Iskandar sighed, igniting his own lightstaff and moving to join the fray.
Nefertari and Iskandar engaged the Samus-host together. It was far from the first time they'd joined forces against a common enemy, and their combat styles melded with each other flawlessly, a unity of purpose that had been considered a weakness by many idiots in the past.
Together, they were strong enough to overwhelm almost every foe, and few of the ones that could resist they would have had the breath to spear talking. But the possessed's biology no longer followed the same rules as it had before, and it kept ranting as their lightsabers clashed.
"Samus is the only name you will hear ! Samus is all around you ! Look out ! Look out ! Samus means the end and the death ! Look out ! Samus is -"
Finally, the revenant fell silent as Iskandar cut it in two from the right shoulder to the left flank with a swipe of his lightstaff. The two pieces slid apart and fell to the floor, but not before Nefertari had severed the creature's head for good measure.
"That," said Nefertari between deep breaths that did interesting things to her chest, "wasn't the kind of workout I had in mind for tonight."
Before Iskandar could respond, the corpse twitched, and he cursed. He could feel the entity puppeteering and warping the corpse trying to escape its dying vessel, to flee into the Temple's corridors in order to find another one.
He wouldn't let that happen. He turned off his lightstaff, attached it to his belt, spread his hands out, and drew upon the Force while reciting incantations he'd learned from Darth Cain's library of Sith lore in an age now considered myth by the Republic. He couldn't control the creature, that knowledge had been lost when Sicarus had been razed to the ground in one terrible night of cleansing after the Emperor's death, but merely keeping it in place was another matter.
With the words and his power, he kept the essence of the monster – the essence of Samus – trapped within the corpse of its latest victim. He felt it thrash and rage, heard it whisper into his mind and clawing at his mental defenses, but he didn't give it an inch.
He had a feeling his date with Nefertari had been indefinitely postponed, and he used the frustration to fuel his power. Not exactly the interpretation of the Sith Code's second verse that his professors at the Academy had taught him, but it felt appropriate.
***
Some time later, Iskandar and Nefertari stood in the audience chamber of the Temple, Darth Cain looming over them from his throne. The usual honor guard of troopers lined the walls, and JURG-N stood at Darth Cain's side as always.
The Lord of Terror had descended in person into the Temple's depths, taking over containing Samus' essence within the corpse and carrying it with the Force back to its cell in the vault. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Iskandar felt proud of the way the Darth had complimented his ritual work as he took over from him, however hasty it'd been.
"You did well, both of you," said Cain. "Having Samus escape to Perlia would have been a disaster, especially with the refugee city so close by."
"We would have tracked it down eventually," Nefertari said, and Iskandar suppressed a wince at his lover's bluntness. Fortunately, Darth Cain seemed to be in a generous mood.
"Of course, but in the meantime, it could have caused untold devastation. Casualties aside, that would have done great harm to our image on the galactic scene. Now, where's the Duros ?"
"In the prison, lord," replied Iskandar. "But we found this on him."
He held up the crimson Holocron they'd found in the intruder's pocket, and felt it leave his hand to fly into Darth Cain's grasp. For several seconds, the Sovereign of Perlia examined the artefact.
"I do not recognize this Holocron," mused the Lord of Terror. "And I know every dangerous piece of Dark Side arcana which was locked away in my vault."
Iskandar blinked, confused. That … that should be impossible.
"Perhaps," he dared suggest aloud, "the robbers brought it with them, thinking it might help them ?"
Cain shook his head. "A logical deduction, but no. When I sealed away the Beast of Whisperhead Mountains again, there was a plinth in its cell that wasn't there before – one on which a Sith Holocron had rested for many years, I could feel it."
Iskandar didn't know what to say, so he stayed silent, as did Nefertari.
"I suppose there's only one way to know," mused the Sith Lord, and with a pulse of the Dark Side that made Iskandar shiver all the way to where he knelt, he activated the Holocron.
The ancient relic shifted open, and projected a life-size figure in the air. The figure wore traditional Sith robes of a clearly masculine cut, and wore a mask that resembled nothing more than a metallic skull. Iskandar recognized that mask, and forced himself to swallow a gasp. Back in the days of the Empire, it had been a relic of great age and power. The mask of Lord Kallig, an ancient Sith, whose name had been made famous by his distant descendant.
Clearly, Darth Cain recognized the mask as well. When he spoke, it was with the voice of someone who didn't dare believe the evidence of their senses.
"Imperius ?" the Sith Lord breathed.
"Hello, old friend," replied the crimson ghost. "I have been waiting for you."
***
AN : Yes, I know. An entire chapter without a Cain POV. But given that this chapter was basically a cross between a heist and horror story, having him get involved directly wouldn't have fit. I promise we'll see his reaction first thing in the next chapter.
What's that ? You're more concerned about what the kark the holocron was doing in Cain's vault ? Don't worry, Cain is surprised too, and you'll get answer in the next chapter, which hopefully shouldn't take as long as this one did. And boy, did this chapter fight me, only to end up being the shortest yet in this story. I don't regret trying something new, but it was a challenge, and I hope the result wasn't disappointing.
Samus, for those of you who came from the Star Wars side and are probably very confused, is the name of a powerful daemon in the 40K universe, specifically from the Horus Heresy series. It is quite the influential figure there, and I will probably elaborate on its nature in this story and how it ended up trapped in the Lord of Terror's vault later.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter and look forward to your thoughts and theories as to what game Darth Imperius (who, for those unaware, is a Light-Sided Sith Inquisitor Player Character from Star Wars : The Old Republic) is playing.
Zahariel out.Last edited: Mar 18, 2025Like Award Quote Reply1688