(I do not own anything from Star Wars.)

Chapter Seven: Down In It

Maul pressed the screen on the right side of the door and passed through after it shot up. It flew back down with a wave of his hand.

He began walking, to his right, down the long dimmed halls. The walls were a plain deep maroon color, and the floor was made up of sand-colored tile.

The large senatorial house looked to be empty of any other living thing, but Maul was able to sense a large quantity of people some floors below him. He decided to keep his distance.

He wished to search for Jedi that may have been in hiding since after the purge. Lord Sidious had told him that he felt a presence. He wasn't sure if it was on Coruscant or not, but the presence was faint.

He was almost sure it wasn't the Jedi currently in his room. The force must have belonged to someone who had been in touch with it for nearly half a century.

Maul decided not to waste any time. Unlike Azazul, he did as his master requested and expected of him. Even though he was no longer the apprentice, he still considered Sidious his master and still held him in a filial light.

He continued down, following the tile which led him in the direction of an elevator. As Maul thought about Azazul, a strange feeling of anathema coursed through him. He tried to brush this antipathy off, but couldn't.

Hate was good for him. It had always given him an immeasurable amount of energy, which almost killed Tyranus in one of his training sessions, after the affixation. But this hate had come from something that Maul wouldn't even allow himself to admit or think back on.

Maul stopped before reaching the elevator with the full knowledge that someone was coming up. Through the glass that lined the complete elevator shaft, he could see the city of Coruscant. It was still disheveled.

The elevator rose to the level that Maul was standing, and two brown doors opened to reveal a rather large bothan male.

The bothan was wearing a metal vest, similar to clone trooper armor, over a red skin shirt. The vest also covered over the lowest parts of his torso. He wore tight black pants which accentuated his rather bulky thighs, and metal knee-high boots that were wide from his large calves.

Maul knew some about this species, but this particular bothan was not within the average height range normal to his race. He had to be at least two meters tall.

The bothan's ears twitched and he glanced up at Maul, looking away from a data pad. His look was that of confusion.

Maul cocked a brow underneath his hood.

The large hairy man brought himself over to the front of Maul, and bowed to him respectfully. His mane of light-brown hair fell past his face.

"Lord Maul- I am second in command of the guards. I go by the name of Farkas."

Maul slightly bowed his head to the bothan, and walked on past him.

Farkas turned himself around and almost asked Maul something.

"What?" He asked in an all knowing voice.

"Did you have any problems with the woman, Lord Maul?" Farkas queried.

"No," Maul answered.

He continued towards the elevator.

"Would you like me to take her from you?"

"No. The Jedi will be mine until Azazul returns."

Farkas was now on alert.

"How did you know that she was a Jedi?" he asked Maul. "Did she tell you of her order?"

Maul almost heard a hint of despair in the bothan's deep voice. Even though the tone was nonchalant, he could still feel what was on the other's mind.

"Why does it matter?" Maul asked out of curiosity.

Farkas kept a look of composure as he responded.

"Lord Azazul gave us the order to severely discipline the girl if she was to tell you of her order, if she was to give you any complications, or if she tried to escape."

Maul hissed an inward sigh. She was threatened.

"She did not tell me," Maul claimed. "The Force inhibitor wasn't able to shield it from me."

His body rounded, so he was now facing Farkas.

"I would like for someone to bring under garments and clothes for her. Nothing provocative," he ordered plainly. "I will be gone for a short while. Make sure that she doesn't leave my room and don't let anyone, other than yourself, go in."

"You want me to bring her clothes?"

"Is that a problem?"

The dumbfounded bothan bowed down again. "No, Lord Maul. I will do so immediately."

Maul added, "Don't tell anyone that I know what she is."

"Yes, Sir."

Maul had already placed himself in the elevator as Farkas obediently replied.

He stood firm in the middle of the lift, and closed his eyes in deep thought. Each breath was silent, and he waited patiently to reach the first floor.

A lot of things had been on his mind as of late. Strange visions seemed to haunt him. He continuously told himself that they weren't important, these things. They were irrelevant to the task at hand.

The morning sun let off immense light as Maul walked out onto the ship docking station. It didn't make it through the shade of Maul's hood, so he wasn't fazed.

He was only six meters away from his infiltrator, Scimitar, when he pulled back his left sleeve. He pressed in a sequence of codes on his control bracelet, and the ramp to his ship released onto the ground.

Yet again, another code was entered in, and the sound of an engine from the inside of the infiltrator commenced.

His lean speeder bike, Bloodfin, floated out of the ship and stopped right in front of him. The speeder may not have been armed, but it had been pared down enough to deliver maximum speed.

With a wave of his hand, he commanded something else in his infiltrator. Almost immediately, a black, polished droid, wandered down the ramp with a blaster rifle in its grasp. Its red lit robotic eyes immediately found Maul. It was an ancient HK-series assassin droid that Maul had found by chance and brought back to life, figuratively speaking.

"Your orders, Lord Maul," The droid spoke in its plain, yet intellectual voice.

"Make sure that no one bothers the ship," Maul commanded.

"What should I do if someone were to try?"

"Give them a warning."

"And if they were to persist?"

Maul gave a hidden smirk with the full knowledge of what the droid wanted to hear.

"Kill them," Maul answered back.

"Very good, my Lord," the droid said in response, not fully able to show how pleased he was with his master's answer.

Maul sat himself on his speeder, Bloodfin, ready to be off on his mission.

The droid, numbered HK-48, walked back up the ramp and closed up the infiltrator from the inside.

Maul grabbed hold of the handles to the speeder bike, and quickly turned them. He went off to search over Coruscant.

Uriael threw back her head to let the warm water make its way, once again, through her lavender-hinted locks. The shower ceiling poured out with trickles of wonderful water.

She had already shampooed her hair twice and washed herself, taking advantage of the time that she had. The Jedi didn't know when the darksider planned on coming back, so she tried to hurry with scrubbing down her body.

After she was done with washing the soap off of her body, she leaned her back against the porcelain wall of the shower, and slid down until she was seated on the shower floor. The peach color was strangely complacent, and the shower itself gigantic. Yet no matter how comfortable the setting, she still felt trapped.

Her head lay softly on the wall, against the unevenness where the grout met with the tile. Water still fell onto her thoughtful face and body, keeping her warm.

As a Jedi, she didn't want to admit her loathing of the situation that she was forced into. She couldn't even say in her mind that she hated it, no matter how much she did. There was something, however, that she could not hide. It was an emotion that caused her adrenaline to rise to the point where not only the essence of her being, but the actual ventricle through which her blood passed would constrain-fear.

She was undeniably afraid. After all of the things that had happened, she still found herself waking up in the middle of the night in a sweat with chills.

When she was a knight, she had always felt as if she had control over her own situation. The level of her maturity during her years as a padawan made it even easier for the council to grant her the title.

Now she was a frightened, timid girl changed by the desecration brought to her.

In her head she could hear Master Yoda saying those old chosen words- Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

It wasn't like she was trained to deal with the sort of torture that Azazul had bestowed onto her. She could deal with pain; being beaten by someone much larger than herself, being shot by a separatist blaster pistol (which happened at least twice), being starved for weeks, and even being experimented on. She had even felt a pain like no other when Azazul had launched a flurry of metal discs in her direction and three cut through her.

In the end, however, there was something about having one's body used and abused sexually against their will.

Uriael pushed up against the wall to stand. She had enough of the shower as well as dwelling on such a dismal subject.

As she walked out of the shower entry, censors on either side shut off the water automatically. The refresher was filled with steam and humidity, and she became chilled from exiting the warmth of the water.

Hoping that there would be a towel hanging up outside of the shower, she found that there was not even a wash cloth.

You should have looked for one before you got in the shower.

Just as she began putting herself down, the sound of a whooshing door played into her ears.

She looked to the side, almost startled, as three small cleaning droids scurried across the floor. They entered out from a cabinet door, which had been swung to the side.

Two of them were not even close to her knees in height. Those two were gray. One of them began following her around, and she found out soon that it was cleaning the water that she had been dripping all over the place. She could hear the vacuum sucking in the excess moisture away from the tile.

The next small one began expelling air from an opening at the base.

Uriael glanced at the mirror, and noticed that the vapor from her hot rinse was fading. The steam around her began to die down into small puffs of fog. Soon enough, there was nothing.

She walked up to the mirror, and saw the last traces of the eyeliner and shadow that Volutta and the theelin hand maidens had painted on her face. She wiped the bits of crumbled, black powder with her index and middle fingers.

Something tapped on her shoulder. She turned quickly and bent her neck to look down at a small silver housekeeper droid. It was in the shape of a trash can with a domed head and was equipped with long and lanky arms with four flexible fingers and had a blue lit visor for its vision.

"Hello, Ma'am. My name is J-23, and I take care in cleaning the rooms and taking orders on this floor."

It then reached behind itself with its left arm and pulled out a white, recently folded towel and held it out towards Uriael.

"Thank you, J-23," she said appreciatively as she took the towel, which she was glad was soft and warm. "I am sorry for the mess,"

"We were made and conditioned to do this task, Ma'am," was all that the droid said.

"Well, thank you-"

"You know, they don't respond to thanks like living beings."

Uriael turned to find Farkas standing at the bathroom door. He had in hand a pile of clothes and a pair of black boots.

She froze with worry. Was he there to punish her? The man did end up finding out about her being a Jedi…

"Are you here to take me away?" she asked, quietly.

Farkas shook his head.

"I'm aware of the… situation. For now, he wants to keep this knowledge between the three of us."

She nodded in understanding. Uriael didn't know if she should be relieved with not being thrown back into the hands of Azazul's henchmen, or continue to be concerned with being held within that room with her current jailor.

"Lord Maul wished for me to bring you clean clothes," Farkas explained, with a gnarling voice.

"Really?" Uriael commented. "Thank you, very-"

It had just occurred to Uriael that Farkas had just said the name "Maul".

"I beg your pardon, but did you just say Lord Maul?"

"That would be his name," Farkas retorted harshly.

"As in, Darth Maul?"

"This is the first time that you have ever made me repeat myself," Farkas growled. "Just take the clothes. I also have-"

He ceased with his sentence, as he saw the look of sheer horror spring up on the Jedi's small face. She started backing away from him, not wanting to comprehend what he was saying.

No. It can't be. He was killed. Obi-Wan killed him.

Uriael found herself backed into a wall, slowly shaking her head.

"Master Kenobi killed him, after he killed Master Jinn."

"Why are you rambling on?"

He cut him in two.

The Sith that was known for murdering one of the most well known and well respected Jedi Knights, was alive…?

Farkas looked rather annoyed by her reaction. The fur on his long snout began to stand up, and he crossed his arms tightly. His metal boots chinked against the floor, as he began to tap his foot, up and down, from his uneasiness.

"Get over it, girl. He obviously hasn't done anything to you yet, to my surprise," Farkas grunted. "You've been through this for a third of a year- almost every single day. Have you not been used to it yet?"

He stood in the doorway waiting for an answer.

She wouldn't answer him. She was confused and bewildered. Not many people, including Jedi, knew of the Sith assassin's name. Only a select few did, and by accident, she was one of them.

Maul was now in the lowest mile of the Galactic planet. He took quick glances at things while on Bloodfin's back. To all of the subhumans and other creatures that found refuge in the abandoned area of Coruscant, he was nothing more than a blur of shadow.

The smell of corroding metal was heavy down in the dumps of Coruscant. Maul guessed that it was due to a mixture of broken down droids and the foundations themselves.

It was immense with overcrowded bars and male entertainment, and he was certain to have passed the Outlander Club. Going down here would be a surprising sight for anyone who thought of this as strictly a business and government oriented planet.

He would not have found himself in such a place if it had not been for the Force. It led him further down to the grounds of the planet. To the foundations of the tall rise of buildings that had been added on to for probably over a few centuries.

At first, he went down at a steady rate. He didn't want to miss any sign that would be given to him. His wandering eyes went right and left, and caught only glimpses of the occasional brothel or tavern. He didn't pay the setting any mind. It was a dump down there and only the most desperate of men would dare to venture.

He became impatient with the searching, and was beginning to question his own sense. It had been close to a year since he had gone searching for Jedi. With certain things that seemed to wander through his mind, he began to curse himself.

Stupid- That is what you are. You let her live because of some idiotic thing like that.

Maul then remembered something from his past; something that he never wanted to recollect.

…

He was sitting in a corner of a small house, shaking, with a strange cold expelling from his red skin. He was a young boy, not even the age of five. For a child, he had already understood fear and knew of pain well.

He could hear a female, yelling at him for a reason that he himself was not even certain of.

'What did I do now?' He thought to himself, bringing himself further into the corner.

The woman's voice was annoyed and trembling, sporting curse words and slandering the young boy in their native tongue.

"You've ruined my life, you little demon!"

His hands covered his ears, and he tried to keep the tears from falling down his little face. He wanted her to stop terrorizing him and to stop referring to him in such a horrible manner. Just like everyone else had.

The woman rushed to him with tears falling down her face and stood there while jabbing her finger in his direction. The small boy curled into a tighter ball, shaking from all of these horrible things that she had to say about him.

"I never wanted you- not ever. I will never love you! And still, you bring yourself back here!"

His pleading eyes met with the tan woman, whose auburn hair barely covered the many horns that surrounded her hair line. Her honey-glazed eyes darted back at him, filled with tears.

"You are nothing to me, or to anyone. Stay away from me!"

He had had enough. He couldn't take it any longer.

"Stop it, Mommy!"

…

Snapping away from this vision, he found that he was speeding through the maze that was this lowly place, not knowing what directions he had taken.

A sudden directional drop in the Force beckoned him to stop. He did as his instincts commanded, and soon a strange breeze blew past him and let a warm zephyr make its way underneath his hood.

He could feel something or someone down there. It was so faint and he couldn't tell if they were even alive, but there was definitely someone down there, who could or once was able to will the Force.

The speeder went straight down, farther into the darkness of the never-ending walls. The essence of iron and steel machinery, busy at work, became stronger than what it had been before. He was reaching the ground.

Mold and fungi was prosperous, most likely from the rain and dark. With how low he was, he knew that the area wasn't tended to like the Emperor's offices or the assembly hall where the delegates of the Empire would meet.

The haggard smell of the mold was overpowered by an even stronger scent, which tickled Maul's nose especially. A familiar scent that he had been trained to withstand- the smell of rotting flesh.

Bloodfin slowed down, outlining the ground just a couple of feet beneath him. He swung his right leg over, and stepped down from his transportation.

The Force was frantic down in the grounded cavern. Maul couldn't see as to why. There appeared to only be decaying corpses and trashed droids. He guessed that the bodies must have been dead for at the most a month.

He treaded over bones and parts, searching in the dark. The sound of his boots crushing metal and ossein echoed through the walls of the catacomb. This was a dirtied place where these poor individuals had met with Death.

Maul of course didn't mind. None of what he was seeing had any effect on his conscience let alone his stomach. He had been so intertwined with the dark energies that seized his force, that death was normal to him, whether it was from old age, a heated battle, or plain murder.

The blanketed odor of gangrene, rust, and a number of excretions would have brought most into a choking frenzy, and probably into a slight mad spell with all of the necrosis pulling off of skeletal remains. The heat made the cycle of their decomposition hurried and much more disgusting.

With what meat and skin was left on their faces, expressions of suffering, terror, and malevolence seemed to glare at the rest of the world, with stares that saw nothing.

A few had the expression of malaise, probably from dying down there as opposed to already being dead.

That was when he noticed a face that had none of those expressions. The flimsy body of a man stretched over a pile of out-of-commission droids.

The skin on his face and shaved head seemed to go from a dark copper to a diseased green. The muscle underneath it must have deteriorated, because his cheek bones were sharp, and gave a starved look. Other than that, he seemed to have a calm aura about him.

Maul looked over the corpse, and observed that he had on a dark brown tunic.

A Jedi.

It would have explained the pull of the Force that had surrounded the body.

He had been searching from that morning to that evening, wanting to find a Jedi to kill. It made him thirst for blood, the urgency of a worthy kill taking hold of his conscience.

In the end, all he had was a corpse within a pile of corpses.

What made him curious was that all of the Jedi killed had been thrown into a fire hole for the spectatorship of the Empire. Obviously this one was misplaced.

Maul then took the time to consider such a thing. Lord Sidious told him that he personally killed four Master Jedi, all of them members of the Council: Mace Windu, Kit Fisto, Saesee Tiin, and Agen Kolar.

He glanced down at the man's right arm, and saw that a hand did not show from the sleeve of his tunic.

Maul now knew that this was one of the leaders of the Jedi- Mace Windu.

Most dark Jedi would have mutilated the corpse of such a man. Maul wouldn't. Under his teachings he did learn to hate the Jedi, but he himself also grew to respect them as his most worthy foes. He wouldn't dare desecrate this man's body.

Maul turned away from the Jedi, and left him in his horrible death bed. He returned to Bloodfin, and set off over all of the rot that he had to trudge through before. His mission was both a success and a failure, in finding no Jedi alive and in not being able to kill one.