A/N: Mobile readers, this chapter is aptly titled Blood and Dust. This and the music choice should be enough warning to not read this late at night in a dark room.

Music for this chapter: Gehenna, (1917 soundtrack) Thomas Newman


Senator Palpatine of Naboo smiles kindly at the elderly woman sat before his desk. The expression is all charitable warmth and sincerity, and he is the perfect image of kindly authority as he extends a hand to pat her arm.

"We will certainly see what we can do about your application, my dear." Palpatine allows his expression to crease slightly – the merest hint of regret. "I have nothing against our Chancellor, but it would seem that the past year there is much he has overlooked. This is one of them. You were right in coming to me."

"Oh, thank you, thank you," the woman repeats, and begins to weep.

Palpatine continues patting her hand gently, even as the sheer loathing behind his smile threatens to manifest itself physically. It would be so terribly simple. A little surge of power through the scholarly fingers that grasp her hand, and she would simply…cease. A delicious rending of the living Force.

He senses his ever-present shadow shift into readiness in the hidden recess in the wall to his left – an instinctive reflection of his current mood, as he trained the shadow to do so.

For a moment, Palpatine is tempted. The woman has few connections. Hardly a soul to miss her, should she disappear. So unlike the young Jedi padawan who had served as his aide for a few short months until her master reacalled her to the Temple.

Enough indulgence. The merest flicker of power, and the shadow settles back into his watchful waiting.

Palpatine sends the elderly woman on her way, another kind deed in a slow building of support needed to achieve his greater aims. In the silence afterward, he sits in the plush interior of his office, and extends his will like an insidious storm over the Senate building. Thousands of tiny flames in the Force, so easy to snuff out – whispered conversations, fears, anger and jealousy; all glowing like seething embers in the dark side of the Force. And there, in the near future…

What he finds both interests and amuses him.

"Come," he says, into the empty air.

A lithe figure melts from the wall to his left, dropping onto his knees before Palpatine and pressing his forehead to the floor in a deep bow, baring his crown of half-grown horns.

"My master," the figure says in a respectful murmur that does not quite hide the catch of a deepening adolescent voice. The faintest crease appears on that red-skinned forehead, stretching the black tattoos inked there.

Palpatine allows the silence to stretch just on the side of unsettlement, speaking only when the faint feeling of dread begins to seep into the shadowed Force.

"Apprentice," he begins, voice devoid of pleasure. It grates now as dark gravel on burning pitch. "I sense that foolish curiosity will soon bring an expendable soul to our doorstep. Handle it. Quietly."

"Yes, Master."

"Ensure that there are no connections to me. You know what will happen to you if there are."

"Yes, Master." Fear intermingled with a desperate wish for praise, tightly furled.

Good. "Then go."

His apprentice fades into the background hum of the Senate building like a wraith.

(:~:)

"The Council wants you to what?" Feemor sounds aghast.

Huei winces at the volume of his master's voice. "It's not impossible, master," he says calmly. "I've been trained for it, and I'm uniquely placed in the Senate. Aides melt into the background of any conversation, and most of the Senatorial staff pay me no mind since I'm blind, anyhow."

"This was the only solution the Council proposed after you reported the separatist rumours to them?

Huei shifts in place. Feemor's words hit uncomfortably close to his own reservations; but he steels himself by digging his knees into the meditation cushion under his weight, and replies. "Yes."

The sound of linen squeaking. It would seem that Feemor, too, is shifting restlessly in his seat.

Then: "Was it an order?" Simmering anger – directed at something else, not Huei himself.

"I'm sorry?" Huei feels confusion creep over him. The Council had asked, and he had agreed. Was it so very different?

"Did the Council order you to act as a spy on their behalf, Huei? Alone?"

A pause.

"I suppose they did," Huei says eventually. "But I agreed, willingly."

A long silence.

Feemor speaks again, much softer, but with a quiet seriousness that makes Huei sit up to attention. His mentor is a man who is quick to humour and quicker to laugh, and the absence of any hint of this in the Force or his voice bodes ill.

"Huei, understand that I say this not in any doubt of your ability, but as a Jedi who has seen the workings of the Galactic Senate for over three decades," Feemor says. "I have seen people disappear in suspicious circumstances for simply hinting they might be a hindrance to certain political plans."

Huei frowns. "But even Master Gallia is a prominent presence in–"

"Master Gallia," Feemor says heavily, "Is a fully fledged Jedi Master, member of the Jedi Council, and from a high-ranking political family. Capturing or killing her would be highly difficult and the political fallout would be dangerous for the instigating party, should any evidence point in their direction.

"You, on the other hand," Feemor continues, "are a senior Jedi padawan known only for your connection to the Zan Arbor case and your part in the Battle of Nal Hutta. Your disappearance would be a hiccup in Coruscant's history. Even if…even if it would be significant to the Order. And me." A slight shiver in Feemor's latter words, echoed by a flicker in his Force-signature, as though it shutters and opens again in one moment.

Huei reaches out with one hand, until it hits his master's knee and from then on upwards to Feemor's fingers.

Feemor's exhale is a palpable thing.

"Each person has their uses in the eyes of the Senate, Huei. Don't delve so far you can't return."

"Yes, Master," Huei murmurs. "I promise."

It only occurs to him a little later, as he boards the Senatorial transport for the Senate building, that he has just made a promise he cannot be sure of keeping.

(:~:)

Obi-Wan wakes the instant the ship reverts to realspace.

He stares up at the durasteel ceiling for a few thudding heartbeats, skin crawling with the instinctive survival instinct to run. The Force is as clear and unsullied around him as ever, but there on the edges of his awareness, a line, far off and partially obscured by crimson mist, beyond which is the scent of old blood.

The light filtering in from beyond the viewport is red, now. Obi-Wan rises from his bunk and crouches by the transparisteel; there, curving away below, is the rocky, red-tinged surface Korriban, wreathed in pus-yellow clouds like a giant, weeping wound.

The surface is growing closer.

Obi-Wan gathers his shields in tighter, and forces himself to breathe. The red line in the Force draws nearer, and as the ship plunges into atmosphere, Obi-Wan has the disconcerting experience of the Force beyond his shields being drowned in blood.

He dresses quickly and makes his way to the cockpit, strapping himself into the copilot's seat with hands far more steady than he truly is.

Dooku does not spare him a glance. Those fencer's hands are at the controls now, guiding the ship into a smooth descent planetward. If the sanguine tint in the Force affects him, he does not show it in the slightest.

Beyond the viewport, the surface of the planet resolves into lines, then deep, abyssal canyons and yawning deserts, with not a drop of water seen except sulfurous pits that bubble and geyser from the depths.

It is such an utterly inhospitable-looking place that Obi-Wan is almost surprised when the shipboard comm crackles to life.

"Unidentified vessel, please acknowledge. You are entering airspace under Commerce Guild purview. Please identify."

"This is Jedi transport Starbird-Alpha-Three," Dooku replies smoothly. "Under commission by the Jedi Council and by extension, the Republic Senate. Requesting permission to land."

There is a hard note to the end of Dooku's message that implies that it not a request at all.

Beyond the horizon, the natural lines of blood-red canyon give way to a hexagonal construction site, a spiderweb of auto-cranes, durasteel, and swarming worker droids. The whole thing is lit with harsh white neon lights.

A long, static-filled pause.

"Cleared to land, Starbird-Alpha-Three," the tinny voice says. "Main hangar, administration facility, if you please. Sending precise coordinates now."

"Acknowledged." Dooku's eyes glitter in the waning light.

The ship settles into the sandy duracrete of the hangar. Through the dusty surface of the viewport, Obi-Wan can see a reedy-necked Gossam male hurriedly approaching.

The two Jedi unstrap themselves from their seats. Dooku pauses for a moment before the viewport, staring down at the approaching figure with an assessing gaze.

Obi-Wan can see the dismissal forming in Dooku's expression even as they turn towards the ship ramp.

Even the air, Obi-Wan notes with distaste, tastes faintly of iron through the sulfur-scented dust – a planet of blood. Behind the ship, the hangar entrance yawns wide and further in the distance, a muted yellow glow in the canyon wall. The entire construction site is eerily silent. Not a single piece of machinery is in motion.

"Master Jedi, Master Jedi," the Gossam male says as they approach, eyes wide and blinking insect-like in the waning dusk light. "I am Supervisor Har-Gow, chief representative of the Commerce Guild over this construction project. You honour us with your pres–"

"Yes, we are quite aware," Dooku interrupts. "I am Jedi Master Dooku. This is Senior Padawan Kenobi. We are ambassadors of the Jedi Order and by extension the Galactic Senate, sent to determine the nature of the irregularity recently discovered here."

The supervisor swallows visibily, long neck undulating. "I am afraid any reports you have received must have been greatly exaggerated," he demurs. "There have been occasional artifacts and structures unearthed of some history to this planet, of course, but nothing…irregular, so to speak."

Obi-Wan's hands move in a quick series of signs.

Har-Gow's eyes widen in incomprehension.

Obi-Wan suppresses a sigh. Draws a quick line of aurebesh across flimsi, and holds it up before the supervisor's tremulous smile.

Is that why you're afraid of looking directly at the canyon wall beyond?

Dooku smiles palpably in the Force as he catches sight of the letters.

Obi-Wan folds the flimsi back into his belt, slightly disconcerted.

The Gossam's orange-yellow skin blanches. He blinks rapidly, globular eyes glimmering.

"I…that is–"

"I suggest you begin speaking candidly," Dooku says silkily. "Our patience grows thin."

Our patience. Obi-Wan flicks a glance at Dooku, one that the elder Jedi does not return.

"I don't know!" Har-Gow wails. "I don't know what happened. Two weeks ago our instruments recorded unexpected seismic activity in access tunnel four. We are slowly hollowing out the cliffside to make a more substantial and permanent hangar and building, you see, and when we sent in construction droids to see what structural damage the activity caused, none returned!" There he pauses, wild fear simmering in his hunched posture, his wringing hands.

"And?" Dooku says softly, hand drifting towards his lightsaber. "You would have hardly left it at that."

"We sent in more droids. Then more. Then three days ago we– we sent a half-dozen men after them," the supervisor stammers. "We heard…things, over the radio. Things we couldn't be sure of. Comms interference. It must have been comms interference. But this morning we found their bodies at the tunnel entrance. Their state was…indescribable."

Obi-Wan feels that same crawling feeling that first presented himself at the ship's return to realspace come over him again. The Force simmers, murky. He swallows.

"Show me the bodies," Dooku says, utterly calm. The supervisor's admittedly terrifying story has no effect on Dooku's tone at all. He could be asking for tea at a diplomatic conference.

Har-Gow nods and begins to scurry in the direction of the hangar door.

"You surprise me, Padawan Kenobi," Dooku murmurs as he moves to follow. "Perhaps there is hope for your ambitions yet."

Obi-Wan stares after the flowing black cloak. Then a chill slips over his shoulder, and he looks sharply behind him.

Dusk has come at last and the shadow of the cliff has reached his shoulder.

Suppressing a shudder, Obi-Wan moves after Dooku and the Gossam supervisor as quickly as possible.

(:~:)

"Hm," Dooku murmurs.

The supervisor had called the condition of the bodies indescribable. It occurs to Obi-Wan then that the word itself is misleading – spoken by one unused to violence and unversed in death. Obi-Wan can think of quite a few words to describe the dozen bodies laid in a row in the frosty air of the industrial conservator unit. Eviscerated. Pulverised. Blended, even.

"Padawan Kenobi."

Obi-Wan glances up from what was probably once a Twi'Lek lekku. Dooku is standing by a pulped Trandoshan, beckoning at Obi-Wan.

"Has Qui-Gon trained you in psychometry?"

"A little," Obi-Wan replies, keeping the signs simple so Dooku can understand.

Dooku nods sharply. "Very well. Tell me what you can read from this belt buckle." His breath mists in front of his beard.

A twisted piece of metal that might once have been a two-tongued belt buckle in cheap industrial steel. A faint series of lines forms the ghostlike memory of the Commerce Guild Insignia. A uniform belt.

The entire thing is crusted in dried blood.

Obi-Wan pushes away memories of blood misting in the air and the retort of an activated slave-chip sending bone and things splattering over the floor. The old whip-scars on his back stretch as he reaches out with a hand quite steady and lightly touches the buckle.

The Force responds as quickly and clearly as ever, but the sanguine scent of the planet continues to insidiously seep through his shields. The taste of iron-tinged sand in his mouth as he marches down the tunnels with the rest of his team; the flickering, shattered remnants of two dozen worker droids ahead, turning the workers' motions into a bizarre contorted stop-motion; a flare of wrongness in the Force; a sudden, piercing scream, from animal or sentient unknown, crimson painting the air, blue-tinged guts on the ground and sawing, rot-scented breath–

Obi-Wan inhales sharply and snaps his eyes open.

Dooku and the Gossam supervisor are looking at him expectantly.

"A predator," Obi-Wan says, fingerspelling the word so Dooku understands.

"Sentient?" Dooku's gaze glitters contemplatively.

"I don't know," Obi-Wan replies. Once he completes the last word, he clenches his hand tight around the rusty stains on his fingers.

Dooku nods. "Supervisor Har-Gow,"

The Gossam jumps at being addressed. "Yes, Master Jedi?"

"We will return to our ship for the remainder of the evening and enter the tunnels in the morning."

"Alone?" The supervisor almost squeaks.

Dooku simply looks at him – an expression of such utter disdain on his features that the poor man visibly swallows his next words.

Obi-Wan responds to Dooku's unspoken signal and follows the elder Jedi out of the chamber. The hangar is deathly silent and still as they enter; their ship looms out of the gaping darkness at the edge itself, beyond which the far-off glow at the base of the cliffs flickers sulfuric yellow.

The air has grown decidedly chill in the intervening half-hour. Ice has begun to form on the ship's aft, encroaching upon the durasteel in questing, bone-white fingers.

Dooku lowers the ship ramp with a careless wave of his hand. The thud of ramp meeting duracrete echoes around the canyon like a cannon-shot.

"Rest," Dooku says, the quiet word thunderous in the silence. "We find answers in the morning." He disappears up the ramp.

Obi-Wan makes to follow, but something – not a whisper in the Force, not a sound, but simply a feeling – makes him halt at the foot of the ramp and turn in place.

The night air is still. Scattered boulders litter the construction site between the hangar and the far-off glow. Something about their shape rings in Obi-Wan's memory, but the Force is a still and dark as a pool of inky water between the hangar and the yellow glow in the distance.

Obi-Wan blinks sharply.

The air itself has shifted, somewhere in the gloom. There is a change in the shape of the darkness at the very fringe of the hangar light's reach.

His breaths thunder in his ears, Obi-Wan sends out a questing flare in the Force.

Nothing.

The line of rocks do not shift.

Obi-Wan tastes blood – iron – in his mouth, where he inhales the red-tinged dust of the planet with every breath. He moves urgently up the ship ramp. His shoulders are tingling from something other than cold, and he keys the ramp shut with uncharacteristic haste.

The ship itself is slightly warmer than the hangar, but lit only with the red glow of auxiliary power. Dooku's Force-presence is already dim in his cabin.

Obi-Wan makes a quick stop by the 'fresher to scrub his hands clean then steps hurriedly into his own small cabin, keying shut the electronic lock immediately. The air here is tinged sickly yellow; he realises after a moment of consternation that the viewport faces the opposite cliff wall, and some of the yellow glow is reflected here.

An unidentifiable silhouette flickers across the cabin wall as something rushes across the source of luminance and leaves it unfettered again the next moment.

Obi-Wan freezes for a moment. Then he kneels slowly by the viewport and peers out to the construction site beyond.

Nothing, as before.

Obi-Wan very decidedly activates the viewport's shutters and plunges the cabin into complete darkness before pulling his hood over his head, shucking his boots, and climbing under the thin blanket of his bunk.

Before he sleeps he spends a moment for what he does every time he lands on a new planet; spreads his senses far and wide for the merest hint of Anakin and Shmi Skywalker.

Nothing.

Obi-Wan supposes he should be glad in this instance.

He calls on the Force to warm himself. It does, albeit with the sticky feeling of congealing blood.

It takes a long while for sleep to come.

(:~:)

Huei feels the emptiness of the Galactic Senate Chamber as a thousand echoes that flicker across his sensitive hearing the moment he steps into the chamber. As senior aide to the Senator of Corellia he is permitted to enter at any time. He has chosen this particular hour because the Senate is not in session; he moves slowly and deliberately by memory alone, and soon, his 'saber-calloused fingers find the familiar edge of the Chancellor's hover-pod.

He steps into the pod, sensing the huge, yawning nothingness above by the stillness of the air. He has vague recollections of the structure of the building itself from before he lost his sight. This is, by his reckoning, as close to the centre of the Senate building as possible.

Huei closes his eyes – out of habit more than anything – and exhales slowly. As he does so he tumbles into the bright river of the Force, and every living thing around him a glimmering flame in the shifting starlight.

He wades through the tides for long minutes, darting from flame to flame. Inanities, worries, snatches of stronger emotion – then something flickers at the horizon of his awareness and he pushes against the current towards it.

It becomes rapidly apparent as Huei approaches in the Force that this thing, whatever it is, is more an absence than anything else; a whirlpool that leads from the starlit river of the Force down, down, to a darkened riverbed. Huei reaches out, carefully–

–and the whirpool folds in on itself and is gone the next moment. Huei has the disconcerting experience of throwing himself mentally through empty space, the psychic backlash whipping across his shields.

He comes back to himself, breathing hard, hands curled tight on the railing as the cold air of the senate chamber swirls about him.

The Force is calm and placid as a lake.

His chrono chimes on his belt.

Huei wipes the cold sweat from his brow and goes back to work.

(:~:)

Morning steals over the canyon valley almost reluctantly, a dirty orange light barely filtering through the gaseous yellow clouds above.

Obi-Wan follows Dooku as they thread between the large boulders that litter the construction site. Each boulder is edged with spiny, bone-like plates of rock, perfectly spherical. Workers move around the boulders closest to the hangar as though they do not exist.

"The boulders are quite heavy," Har-Gow chatters as he leads the two Jedi towards the ever-present yellow glow in the far cliff wall. "We have put in an order for stronger repulsor lifts. In the meantime we have to work around them." His steps slow as they round the last of the boulders. "That is the entrance tunnel," he says, his unease a palpable thing. "We found the bodies a few metres in."

The supervisor stops there, obviously unwilling to approach further.

The two Jedi take a few steps towards the cliff face. The tunnel entrance itself is a durasteel arch that sits flush with the rock itself, lit within by industrial lamps every few paces that emit a dirty yellow glow, unable to fully eradicate the pooling darkness between them. Further back the tunnel curves gradually to the left and out of sight.

There, a few paces into the tunnel itself, are congealed pools of brownish liquid and scattered…things. Dried blood and what smaller remains were not retrieved.

Tamping down on the tingling feeling on the back of his neck, Obi-Wan crouches by the furthest pool and examines the duracrete floor.

"Track marks," he signals to Dooku, using the universal hand-signs Jedi use for mission-related communication.

"The bodies were dragged here, then," Dooku murmurs. "Supervisor Har-Gow," he calls.

"Yes?" The supervisor is dithering thirty paces away, evidently too frightened to approach further.

Dooku looks for a moment as though he is considering flaying the man alive for incompetence. "We will return by nightfall," he says, voice colder than the early morning air. "See that our transport is fully fueled for departure by then."

"Certainly, Master Jedi," Har-Gow says, with a very dubious expression indeed. "I will arrange it for your return."

The fact he highly doubts they will return at all ricochets through the Force as he turns and half-runs back towards the administrative building in the distance. Neither Jedi comment on it.

Obi-Wan detaches a glowstick from his utility belt and cracks it to life. He sees Dooku do the same out of the corner of his eye.

They move deeper into the tunnels. With each step the Force compresses like a dying star collapsing in on itself. What little daylight there is grows dimmer, until they turn the corner and their path is solely lit by choking industrial lights and their glowsticks, lurid yellow and green like an old bruise. The ground gives way from duracrete to roughly hewn rock, and slopes gradually downwards with every step. Every now and then the tunnel walls open in a gap; Obi-Wan shines his glowstick down one of them and is greeted with a maze of stalactites and stalagmites, like interlocked spinous teeth. There is no sound in the gloom save for their steps and their own breaths; the air so still that any movement seems like thunder.

The lights are placed more sparesely, now. Obi-Wan finds himself straining to resolve shapes in the distance. Twice he almost believes he sees movement, only to realise it is a reflection of his own form in puddles or metal crates that loom out of the gloom.

It does not help that the only air comes from the way they came; Obi-Wan finds himself fighting the urge to look behind him, a silent shriek building in his awareness that has no ground in reality. The few times he does give in, he finds nothing but still darkness, and his own warped shadow lapping at his feet.

Dooku's lips are pressed in thin line. There is something of predatory grace in his movements, and his dark eyes glitter in the wan light.

They move on, in a green-lit bubble, tracing the rusty marks at their feet, until they come to a fork in the tunnel. The left-hand fork slopes upward a few metres until it ends in a mess of torn wiring and collapsed metal. The right-hand fork is lit with a solitary, flickering yellow light, which seeps for two paces down the passage then seems to be swallowed whole by the gaping darkness beyond.

Down this tunnel, far in the distance, a single, crimson light is flickering. It flashes on and off with unsettling regularity, a scarlet eye blinking at them through the emptiness. The Force coalesces towards that far-off point like a black hole, tumbling away from their boot-tips like a deepening curve in space-time. What is stranger is the faint lick of air that comes from that direction; a sluggish, cold breeze that moves through the metal supports of the tunnel with a high-pitched moan.

This, Obi-Wan thinks with an ill attempt at humour, is one of those exact situations where Ezhno would do the smart thing and make a run for it. Huei, of course, would have been able to sense whatever this thing was from twice the distance and avoided it entirely.

Dooku, naturally, has already begun to move ahead; Obi-Wan wraps his free hand around the hilt of his lightsaber to ground himself to the crystal within and follows.

The ground grows slick with things underfoot. Obi-Wan catches a glimpse of something that might once have been a body part and fights against the acid at the back of his throat.

The edge of their circle of green light reaches the edge of crimson. It takes a moment for Obi-Wan to understand the shapes before him.

Maintenance droids, shattered and torn apart. At least two dozen of them, with one emergency red light still flickering in the visual receptors of one – a blinking light set in the half-face that still remains, the other half shorn clear away in torn durasteel. Obi-Wan can still see the metal grille that made up the droid's vocoder, warped and twisted like rotted teeth.

Beyond this graveyard of droid parts there is a rock face littered with scattered blasting equipment. Cold air wafts through a crack roughly half an arm's length in width and a metre and a half high, a high-pitched moan. Beyond this the Force compresses further, a current flowing in and not returning. Obi-Wan extends his consciousness in that direction and pulls back sharply, shaking his head. It is rather like stepping too close to a cliff edge and almost slipping down the side.

"Hm," Dooku murmurs over the sound of the wind. "There is no evidence of–" he breaks off sharply and spins towards the tunnel.

Obi-Wan snaps around and stares up back through the tunnel to the solitary yellow light in the distance. For a moment it seemed–

Nothing.

Dooku's shoulders relax under his cloak.

The light snuffs out.

A cacophony of piercing screams ricochet down the tunnel towards them, growing louder and closer by the moment. The sound is horrifyingly sentient. Over it all is the scraping patter of many, many limbs scrabbling over rock, rushing towards them in an inescapable wall of sound.

The Force shrieks a warning.

Obi-Wan's sword-hand darts towards his lightsaber.

Dooku spins in place, snatches the back of Obi-Wan's cloak, and thrusts him bodily into the crack in the rock wall.

Obi-Wan yells silently as a sharp stone edge cuts his cheek. But the next moment Dooku is pressing into the space behind him, and Obi-Wan understands. He struggles through the narrow gap, teeth bared in pain as the rock scores shallow scratches as he squeezes past – and all the while, the moaning of the wind melds with the echoing screams of the chamber behind, an awful, blood-filled choir in accompaniment with the sanguine river of the Force. The glowstick slips from his hand and he writhes forward by feel alone, in complete darkness. Behind him, Dooku's Force-signature flashes once before dimming into its usual reserved hum.

He stumbles out into a sudden emptiness, tumbling onto his hands and knees. His palms scrape across gravel. He feels Dooku do the same, a rustle of heavy cloak beside him.

The moan of the wind abates somewhat.

Hiss-snap.

The bright golden glow sends black spots lancing painfully across Obi-Wan's vision. He flinches away for a moment, but the air is suddenly filled with a soothing, familiar hum and he blinks his eyes open again.

Dooku holds his lightsaber quite steady, blood seeping into his silver beard from a cut on his temple. His dark eyes are hard. Unyielding.

Obi-Wan brings a hand to his stinging cheek. It comes away red.

"I trust you are not significantly injured," Dooku says evenly. There is not a trace of the past few minutes' ordeal in his voice.

Obi-Wan nods carefully, but does not reply His heart is still beating far too quickly for his liking, and he cannot be sure his hands will not shake should he try.

Dooku rises from his crouch. He is holding his left arm quite still at his side. As he steps back towards the gap they just emerged from, he leaves dark splotches on the ground at his wake.

Obi-Wan gets to his feet. He frowns at the stains, then at Dooku's arm.

The elder Jedi notices. "It is nothing of consequence," he says sharply. A moment, where he peers into the depths of the gap. "They cannot follow," he says with a satisfied note. He does not elaborate on who, or what, they might have been.

Obi-Wan palms his lightsaber, activates it, and the two Jedi turn as one to assess their surroundings.

They stand in a space roughly ten paces across. The walls bear remnants of what must once have been intricate carvings, worn down by moisture and wind until the shapes grow vague. Recessed stone shelves dot the walls; under these are workbenches and shattered chairs made of rotting wood. There is no light source here save for their lightsabers, but air flows continually through a small doorway in the opposite side of the space.

The singularity they followed in the Force is now all around them; seeped into the walls like a dense, opaque miasma.

As Dooku begins circling the shelves and workbenches, Obi-Wan tilts his head at the floor. He frowns. Crouches closer, and uses his boots to kick away some of the dust.

His eyes widen.

The Jedi Starbird stares back at him from under his feet, perfectly recognizable even under a multitude of slashes that deface its elegant wings. Over it all someone has taken a red liquid and painted a circle bracketed on both sides by sharp, three-pointed shapes.

He has seen this sigil once before – above the gates of the Sith ruins far, far below the Jedi Temple.

Dooku catches the surprise in Obi-Wan's Force-signature and steps closer. He too stares down at the two symbols at their feet, washed in a mixture of blue and bright yellow light, each seemingly trying to climb over the other.

"The symbol of the Sith," Dooku murmurs. "Do you recognise it?"

Obi-Wan nods. Raises his free hand. "On Coruscant. Under the Temple."

Dooku sees the question in his eyes. "Korriban was the battlefield for many a war between the Jedi and the Sith," he says. "It is not so unexpected that smaller temples and places such as this might have exchanged hands between the two sides many times." His lips thin. "As our Temple on Coruscant, it seems, was built on the ruins of the Sith."

The information does nothing to relieve Obi-Wan's tense nerves.

They circle the chamber methodically, each taking half. Most of the things Obi-Wan finds are useless; a toolkit too rusted for use, a number of disintegrating, real parchment books that shatter to flakes the moment he lifts them, and what might have been the beginnings of a lightsaber hilt but now too encased in lichen and ossified stone to discern its components.

But the next workbench he reaches is different.

Everything is covered with a similar layer of dust – but the inkwells here are of finer make, and in a less severe state of deterioration. The styluses are not so different than the ones Obi-Wan is used to. There is an echo in the Force of more recent use here – decades, not millennia. Scattered components recognisable as lightsaber parts. A small, rectangular pouch of oiled nerf-hide.

Obi-Wan tips the pouch on its side, one-handed. A small leather journal slips onto the dusty surface. There, almost faded on its front, is a stylised old-galactic-standard S drawn in red ink, with a gapped circle surrounding the letter itself.

The entire thing reeks of the dark side.

Gingerly, Obi-Wan opens the journal. It is in surprisingly good condition; the handwriting within sharp-edged but mostly legible.

more apparent with every passing day that the final downfall of the Brotherhood of Darkness at the culmination of the New Sith Wars was entirely of their own making. Ruusan may have been the planet where those final battles took place, but the seeds of the shameful ideologies that led to the creation of the thought bomb and its eradication of any Force-sensitives in its blast radius, Sith or Jedi, originated here. For this reason, Korriban's atmosphere will forever smell of blood.

A weapon that destroys its wielder is no victorious weapon at all. For all his pomp and speech, Lord Kaan was naught but a coward. The darkness is patient. The darkness must wait. This is how the Sith have persevered through the Rule of Two in the millennia since that last battle, and this is how I will soon reclaim the galaxy from the Jedi once more. The Jedi Order has grown fat and careless in their millennia-long peace.

"Padawan Kenobi."

Obi-Wan startles. Dooku is standing right beside him, gaze inscrutable. Obi-Wan wordlessly hands over the journal.

Dooku deactivates his own lightsaber and peruses the journal for long moments. A sharp smile. He tucks the journal into his tunic. If the miasma of the dark side that clings to the little book affects him, he does not show it.

"We may have stumbled upon what the Jedi sentinels have been collectively seeking for the past three decades," Dooku murmurs. "A success most sound. Now, let us go about finding a route back to the surface."

That, Obi-Wan thinks, is the best thing he has heard in the past few hours put together.

Dooku reactivates his lightsaber. The two Jedi move to the doorway at the far side of the chamber. Stone steps lead upward into the gloom.

They ascend for an eternity, two cloaked ghouls in the darkness, lit only with a blue and a gold blade. The wind blows harsher into their faces from above, but there is a tint of fresh iron to it, now.

Obi-Wan never thought he would be glad for the scent of fresh blood until the darkness peels away and he finds himself suddenly standing on a canyon lip, whipped by chill, red-sanded winds. Korriban's sun shines weakly through the intervening clouds. He deactivates his lightsaber and clips it to his belt. Behind him he can hear Dooku doing the same.

He glances at Dooku. Out in the sunlight the blood on Dooku's left sleeve is rust-red and caked with dirt.

Dooku follows Obi-Wan's line of sight. His gaze hardens.

"Come," he says severely, turning towards the construction site, visible through the haze of red sand at the far end of the canyon below. "We are done here."

It occurs to Obi-Wan as he follows in Dooku's wake that this stubborn unwillingness to receive help or admit weakness is something he has seen before.

Qui-Gon has often done much the same.

Faint screaming jerks Obi-Wan out of his thoughts.

Ahead, the construction site echoes with rapid bursts of blasterfire interspersed with cries for help. Over it all is a guttural roaring, a multitude of sharp clicks and the same terrifyingly humanoid shrieking that Obi-Wan heard in the tunnels.

By some unexpressed communication both Jedi take the last hundred meters to the construction site at a fast clip, move closer to the cliff edge and stare down to the site below.

The first thing Obi-Wan notices is that there are no longer any boulders. The next thing he notes is that this is because the boulders have unfolded.

He remembers the click-click-click of a hundred thousand joints moving about him, blasts of ravening air in his mouth as skeletal, three-fingered creatures leap at him from the shadows of the Sith ruins–

These are shaped roughly like their cousins on Coruscant – wide-jawed, slavering tongues, but with a less prominent spine and many-jointed bones tinted red in their too-long arms. Every movement of their spider-like limbs releases a sharp click. The ground is already churned into mud, running fresher red where blood mixes in with ochre dust. In and among the men in Commerce Guild uniforms desperately spraying blasterfire are other creatures: three-metre tall four-limbed beasts, with spiked heads disproportionately large for their bodies and bulging sinews and hard muscle rippling under a layer of orange-red fur. Even as the two Jedi watch, one opens its mouth and emits a piercing, humanoid scream as it leaps forward and tears a Trandoshan apart in one savage snap.

"Terentateks," Dooku murmurs next to Obi-Wan. "The large, spike-headed ones, at least. They feed off the blood of Force-sensitives, but in this case they must be settling for simpler fare. Their cry is nothing like what I've previously seen described. It is likely they are some variant not previously recorded." He pauses. "The skeletal creatures, on the other hand, I have not seen."

"I have," Obi-Wan replies, scratched fingers precise, and Dooku's eyes glimmer in the noon light.

"Quietly," Dooku says, leading the way down the canyon wall in a series of dizzying Force-jumps.

Obi-Wan follows, lightsaber ready in his hand as they skirt the bloodbath that is the centre of the construction site, but stops in his tracks when it becomes apparent that Dooku is heading straight for the hangar.

Twenty paces to their right, a Twi'Lek male dressed in the bloodstained, torn remnants of a construction uniform screams as he is devoured limb by flailing limb, a Terentatek and a skeletal creature each taking quick, almost delicate bites in turn.

Dooku notices the lack of his erstwhile shadow. Halts in place and levels a hard stare at Obi-Wan.

The Twi'Lek's voice cuts off sharply. He no longer has a head.

Obi-Wan meets Dooku's gaze and shakes his head once.

He has enough time before he activates his lightsaber and turns to the fight to see Dooku's gaze widen; that ever-stoic, mission-focused mask slip as Dooku opens his mouth to shout.

"Padawan Kenobi!"

Obi-Wan leaps into the fray. The following moments are a mess of orange-red fur, a frenzied clicking, that awful, human screaming, and the hum of his lightsaber turning to fever pitch. He cleaves bone from bone and great gashes across a Terentatek's back, the howling scream of the creature mirrored by the shrieking of his lightsaber – pulling a flailing Togruta man free from a skeletal hand only for a spindle-toothed jaw to snap shut over the man's face, spraying Obi-Wan with hot blood and brains as he flinches away–

"Obi-Wan!"

A yellow-gold bar of plasma slices through the jaw of the creature that had been a handspan from taking Obi-Wan's head. Obi-Wan looks up to see Dooku, teeth bared in a fearsome growl, reach out with one hand and tear out the tongue of a skeletal creature with the Force. Vile ichor sprays them both.

A brief moment, where their eyes meet and Obi-Wan sees something perilously close to rage in Dooku's dark eyes.

They fight on. Every man they pull from the jaws of death is eviscerated just a quickly. The blasterfire grows thin, then disappears entirely; Obi-Wan leaps and twists and rolls and avoids death and mutilation by a hairsbreadth; Dooku is a whirling, dark-cloaked silhouette that darts with efficient precision from target to target, footwork sure.

The scent of blood fills the air, fresh and utterly real compared to the sanguine-tinged Force; lightsaber blades vaporize with each blow and turns blood to the scent of burnt flesh and plasma.

Eventually, Obi-Wan finds space to breathe. Sweat pours into his eyes and stings the reopened cut on his cheek. He plunges his lightsaber into the base of a Terentatek's skull and nearly falls to his knees as the beast collapses under him. He swings his filthy padawan braid out of his face just in time to see Dooku dart at a skeletal creature, a Makashi lunge so fast it blurs movement, and spear the creature through its dark eye socket.

The creature shudders once, limbs flailing in cacophony of clicking, and falls still.

Obi-Wan realises abruptly that all is silent.

He surfaces a little from the Force and blinks around him. The construction site is no more than a pit of blood and torn flesh; the still mounds of dead creatures interspersed with bodies of Commerce Guild workers. Most of these are so trampled and twisted they are nearly unrecognisable as any species.

Obi-Wan glances down at his tunics and immediately regrets doing so. He breathes shallowly and looks at Dooku, instead.

Dooku straightens slowly, chambering his lighstaber at his side. His usually perfect head of silver hair is matted with blood. His cloak lies heavy and sodden on his shoulders, dripping muck onto the sand. He holds Obi-Wan's gaze evenly as he purposely gestures around them with his uninjured hand.

Obi-Wan looks away.

There is no point in Dooku voicing anything. His point is made. Dooku and Obi-Wan are the only things alive in a two-click radius. The Force rings with the deaths of dozens of sentients and creatures alike.

The two Jedi make their way towards the hangar, wordlessly.

As their sodden boots leave churned mud and ring on duracrete, Obi-Wan spots a crumpled figure right at the edge of the hangar. It is almost familiar.

Dooku has lowered the ship ramp. He halts there, gaze inscrutable, as Obi-Wan crosses to the figure and turns it over.

Har-Gow's blank eyes stare up at the hangar ceiling sightlessly. The Gossam is missing half his forehead.

Obi-Wan bows his head. Draws in a harsh breath.

"Obi-Wan," Dooku says, once. It is not cruel. It is not kind. It simply…is.

Obi-Wan nods, leaves the body be, and strides up the ramp.

He straps himself into pilot's seat. Dooku lowers himself into the copilot's seat, favouring his injured arm.

The ship rises, turns, and gathers momentum as it speeds into the filthy yellow sky.

(:~:)

The three-day journey back to Coruscant is spent largely without conversation, spoken or signed.

After cleaning up, Obi-Wan had scrubbed the cockpit clean without being told. Dooku had watched from the common area, tending to the gashes in his left arm with bacta strips. The journal sat on the table before him.

Surprisingly, Dooku spends just as much time working on his sign language as he does perusing the journal. Obi-Wan elects not to comment.

The holonet news is empty of the incident on Korriban. Evidently, the Guild has funds enough to keep even something of this scale quiet.

"I have a question, Master Dooku," Obi-Wan expresses suddenly, when the ship is almost at the end of its hyperspace journey. Obi-Wan's movement catches Dooku's eye, but Obi-Wan can see incomprehension there; he sighs and repeats the question, moving slowly.

"Of course," Dooku murmurs, lowering the journal. "What do you wish to ask?"

"Why didn't you bring Huei with you instead of me?"

Dooku stills.

Obi-Wan steels himself. "Huei was with me when we encountered the Sith ruins under the Temple. He has Force-sensory capabilities far more advanced than you or I. That he has no sight is no impediment to him. I do not believe you would treat your previous mentorship with him as a reason to avoid utilizing his talents. It would be unlike you."

A pause. Dooku has not moved.

"Do you understand?" Obi-Wan ventures, fingers slow. Perhaps he had expressed that last part too fast for–

"I understand your general meaning," Dooku says, quite calmly. He pushes the journal aside. "My reasons are simple."

A moment, where Dooku rises to pace the small space. Obi-Wan sits stock-still.

"Huei's short apprenticeship under my tutelage was enough for me to impress certain lessons upon him, lessons which Qui-Gon has only ever half-learnt," Dooku begins. "In your case, this has manifested itself in a complete inability to see when to cut your losses to ensure victory."

Obi-Wan bristles at that. Dozens of dead men are not simply losses to be cut.

Dooku raises a careless eyebrow at Obi-Wan's response and continues to speak. "You must learn to do what is necessary, Obi-Wan. The journal we recovered is perhaps the most precious artifact in our struggle against darkness in recent memory. If I had perished with you on Korriban the Order would never know of its existence.

"I rather thought you could do with further education," he finishes. "And there is the simple fact that you have…better hopes…for success than Huei does."

Obi-Wan stands abruptly. His hands curl at his side.

Dooku looks dispassionately at him. "Save your anger, Padawan Kenobi. I am not your enemy."

The ship shudders. Through the viewport, milky white of hyperspace melts away to velvet-backed stars, and the metallic curve of Coruscant below.

Dooku moves towards the cockpit. "Don't be so surprised you are better than Huei or your peers, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You would be a fool if you did not use that to your advantage."

Obi-Wan sits, fists white-knuckled on the table, and stares at the stylised S on the journal beside them.

It is almost as if it is mocking him.


Next chapter: Huei and Obi-Wan dive deeper into their separate mysteries. Ezhno finds trouble brewing.

A virtual huzzah for anyone who guesses the significance of that journal. That being said, this chapter was both very enjoyable and somewhat disturbing for me to write. I probably shouldn't write horror at 11:30 pm anymore, as I learnt last night.