Chapter 82: Lumis

"Kenobi."

The man didn't answer. He rarely did. Sure, he spoke. Sometimes. When necessary. But never when addressed, and always in short, harsh commands. Sometimes, if he was very, very lucky, Kenobi would answer questions, but only if the answers were short. The flippant, easy drawl, the insufferable teasing, the good humor, the sharp sarcasm was all gone. Maybe it would be different around others, but Dooku didn't see it. Among his fellow Sith, Kenobi no longer had anything to hide, so he didn't. He wore no mask, maintained no defenses, allowed the Dark Side to rage through him without restraint, and the Count was beginning to miss the arrogant front and the attempt the naturally solitary man had made to be sociable.

"Kenobi."

Still, nothing. Dooku frowned. They stood together in his palace on Mustafar in the long, elegant living room, the younger man standing at one of the large windows that looked out over the flowing lakes of lava, the glow illuminating his expressionless face in red light. Sidious was coming, the first time they will have seen their Master since he had come to his apprentice's aid on Mandalore nearly a week ago. They did speak to their Master everyday via holocommunication, but the meetings were short, more for the purpose of checking in than anything else. Sidious needed to monitor the changes in his apprentice, after all. The tide of the Force had shifted, and their Master needed to know how best to fit in this new beast the Dark Side had given him.

"Kenobi."

He was met with silence. Dooku hadn't left Kenobi's side since he had heard what had happened, and Kenobi hadn't left Mustafar since Sidious dragged him away from Mandalore. He wasn't there out of sympathy for the man, though Dooku did keenly feel the loss of Satine. There was no room for coddling in the Sith, and he knew the pain of it all would only make Kenobi stronger. No, he was there for solidarity. Before, they had planned to overthrow Sidious together, and the success of their most recent alliance was not worth destroying over something like this. But now, that plan to kill their Master was compromised. His reasons for murder had been robbed from him with the death of his family, and with no child to protect, no woman to keep safe, no legacy to defend, all that was left was the need to kill for power. However, Sidious had done away with that desire by securing Kenobi's loyalty by arriving on Mandalore to help him avenge Satine and the young apprentice that never was.

"Obi-Wan."

It was as if he hadn't even heard him. Dooku frowned, and leaned down to examine the man's face, careful not to get too close. More often than not, Kenobi lost himself within the Force, so much so that the Dark Side would open up wide, take the Sith's body in its greedy hands and assume control of the willingly empty vessel. There was no talking to him then, and during those times, it was best to avoid him, but this wasn't it. He was present within himself, though just barely. The first few nights, Kenobi had gotten so staggeringly drunk that Dooku had to carry the intoxicated Sith Lord to his bed, but his inebriation made him have nightmares and visions so violently vivid that he was ripped from alcohol-induced unconsciousness in a state of such panic and rage that he had refused to go back to sleep. It became easier to retreat into the Force and allow the Dark Side to take over. Kenobi didn't sleep anymore, not in the conventional sense. The Force regenerated him while it maintained ownership of his body.

"Obi-Wan!"

Dooku wondered if Kenobi blamed himself for what had happened. He would have looked, would have reached out to him to sense his emotions, but had tried such before, and it proved to be a frighteningly poor idea. Dooku had reached out, dipped his hand into the waters of Obi-Wan's mind, and was violently pulled underneath, endlessly downward into consuming darkness until he thought he could not breathe. The calm, cool waters of the Dark Side were violent and raging, filled with riptides and currents and Obi-Wan stood in the center of it as a vortex, and when Dooku had come too close, he was caught in the pull and could not escape, felt himself torn apart and consumed by a storm that was swiftly swept away by the raging flames of an inferno that couldn't be stopped. It took every effort of his own talent in the Force to rip himself away from Kenobi's grasp, a pull that the young Sith inadvertently exerted. His defenses were down, and looking inside him led only to darkness and ruin. Dooku decided that doing so in the future was...ill-advised.

"Obi-Wan!"

It was the hardest he had tried to talk to the Sith Lord since his stay on Mustafar. Mostly, Dooku just watched him work, fascinated by the ingenuity that was brought about by creatively cruel applications of the Dark Side on other living creatures. Most of those beings were infants, Twi'leks, for the most part, long term projects of his that had finally come to fruition and were ready to be tested upon, which he did without emotion or remorse. Perhaps he would have been gentler if he had come to be a father himself, but...that seemed like an unlikely outcome. But now, they needed to talk. Dooku had seen enough to understand what had become of Obi-Wan Kenobi, knew that the death of Satine had left the young Sith with an insatiable craving for darkness. There was a concern before that the tragedy would ruin him, but that was quickly shown to be unfounded. Kenobi was the Dark Side, and without love to hold close, his arms were free to fully embrace the destiny laid out before him. The first few days after saw Kenobi try to drown the pain, but it was quickly abandoned for embracing the pain instead. He felt it deeply, often, allowed it to fuel him, felt every pulse of anger deep in the heart of him, and shied from none of it. He was, after all, a Lord of the Sith. No less was expected of him.

"Lumis!"

Golden eyes shot to him, blazing and furious, and Dooku choked on his breath. Now that he had his attention, he didn't know what to say, and his hesitation angered the already wrathful lord, his mouth curling up into a disdainful sneer.

"What."

"What are your plans?" Dooku asked swiftly, and the edge of Lumis' furious eyes twitched in irritation.

"The fruition of the Sith Imperative, what else is there?" he snapped, looking back out toward the lava, and Dooku watched a shiver run through the man's body, though his impassive face didn't seem to register it. The final twitching of a dead man, nothing more.

"We had plans," he began through clenched teeth.

"Foolish plans," Lumis said, almost distant, as though he were fading away into the Force. "I'm not strong enough to be the Sith Master, I will never be strong enough." Dooku sighed. It was pointless to press the issue. When it had mattered most, all of Obi-Wan's strength had amounted to nothing, and nothing could convince him otherwise. Dooku wouldn't have tried to tell him such anyway. That rage made him powerful, and it was derived from a deeper pain than his betrayal by the Jedi. What's more, the wound was fresh, gaping and bleeding and with new pain came new power.

Lumis' face twisted with rage when he heard a pitiful whimper from behind him, and both he and Dooku turned to see Yoda, the large creature laying upon his belly on the floor and chewing on the twisted cybernetic legs of Maul, the creaking and groaning of metal bending and twisting drifting through the air as the powerful teeth gnawed at them. The former Sith wriggled on the synthetic hips on which he was mounted, trying weakly to get away, a meek cry uttered from his parched throat when the rancor laid his large claws on the red and black arms to still him. With a snarl of fury, Darth Lumis stalked from the window, his hand extended before him, and Maul's body hitched, heaving as he gasped for air. Dooku stood back and watched as the predator tortured the captured Zabrak. It wasn't wise to get between the Sith Lord and what he considered his. Lumis didn't restrain any of his rage, allowing it to come and go in sudden, crashing waves, and it made him unpredictable and dangerous, and Maul was always at the end of his wrath.

He crouched down in front of the prone Zabrak, his hateful eyes roaming over the pitiful creature, his lithe black and red torso slick with the rancor's thick saliva and his own blood from deep cuts accidentally left by Yoda's sharp, jagged teeth. Lumis growled in disgust. "Look at me." With a pained whimper, Maul did as he was told. He always did. In the beginning, he had been boasting in his anger and his pain, had bragged about what it felt like to kill two lives with one stroke, had detailed the pleasure he had felt as Kenobi watched his lover fall. But it hadn't lasted long, and Maul had been left a broken mess of his former self. Sidious had never been so cruel. Sidious wanted an apprentice, so a level of refined care was given to his torture. Lumis wanted no such thing. He just wanted Maul to live a long, long life in his gentle hands.

"Mercy," the Zabrak whimpered, flinching when the Sith's eyes narrowed in rage. "Mercy, Master, please..."

"Mercy." Lumis scoffed. "There is no mercy, is there?" When the Zabrak moved to beg again, the Sith lashed out and struck him across the face, his hand catching on the sharp cranial horn just in front of his ear and tearing a rough, bleeding gash across his palm. Lumis didn't seem to notice, and certainly didn't register any pain. His eyes drifted to Maul's left arm, the appendage being pinned by the heavy weight of the happily gnawing rancor's claw, and slowly looked to the Zabrak's hand, the thick flesh at the base of his thumb scarred with the deep imprint of Satine's teeth. Lumis drank deep of the Force as he felt rage rush through him. He had made Maul tell him all that had happened, all he had done before he got there. He wanted to hear it, needed to hear it all, would never, ever forget, and he would keep it close, an easy way to stoke the flames of his rage when he felt he had nothing left to burn.

She had been fierce in her final moments. Satine was unafraid and bold and strong, Mandalorian until her very end, as close to Sith as a non-Force sensitive could be. Obi-Wan would have been proud. Lumis was simply furious that such a thing of beauty was stolen from him. He struck Maul again, frowned when he saw the bloody smear across the Zabrak's face, and looked coldly at his hand, the gash bleeding profusely. He hadn't noticed.

"I do like it when you beg, slave," Kenobi said, his voice distant and removed, and Maul choked as he felt the golden eyes on him. "Even if it doesn't work. Begging never works. But I do like it."

Maul sobbed. They had been over this so many times, and he still didn't know the best course of action. If he said nothing, the Sith Lord would be angered for not getting what he wanted. If he did beg, the Sith Lord would be offended that he dare beg. He couldn't decide which was worse. He could never decide. And his indecision angered the Sith Lord, and he was struck again, feeling a hot, sticky substance splatter his face as Lumis' hand burned across him. It was blood. It was always blood.

"M-mercy..." Maul finally choked out, and Lumis looked hatefully down upon him, his bloody hand held out in front of his face.

"I haven't even begun to hurt you, filth," Lumis growled, his fingers extending and sending small, jolting arcs of electricity into the Zabrak's neck, and a strangled scream caught in his throat. Yoda recoiled with a sharp growl, the jolt of electricity coursing through the Zabrak's body, through his cybernetic legs, and into the beast's mouth. He wasn't hurt, but he was stunned, and he dropped Maul from his mouth, the mangled legs falling with a clang to the ground, his arms still pinned. The rancor cautiously sniffed at the shaking Zabrak, determined it was safe, and took the twisted, chewed heap of metal back into his mouth. "Look what you did," the Sith snarled, holding up his dripping hand in front of Maul's face. "Lick it off."

With a strangled whimper, Maul did as he was ordered, the Sith holding his hand just far enough away to make it a struggle, to make him reach for it, and he caught himself just before a flash of anger tore through him, and willed it back, giving way to absolute submission. It wasn't enough. The Sith had sensed his brief show of temper, and he knew well enough that he would be made to suffer for it. With a hapless sob, Maul brought his tongue across the Sith's palm, gagging slightly as the thick, metallic smell of blood filled his nose. When he was an apprentice, Sidious had encouraged his temper, had praised his lust for violence. But with Lumis...he expected submission. There was no praise for submitting quickly, no encouragement to continue to do so. It was expected, and to defy his expectations meant...nothing. There would be pain and torture and experiments regardless of how he behaved, but Maul couldn't find it in him to resist his new Master.

Lumis' other hand laid gently on Maul's head, his thumb drawing circles on his forehead, and Maul shivered before he began to silently weep, his hoarse voice begging for the Lord not to do this, but the Sith heard nothing. Maul rarely felt a gentle hand, but he was coming to understand that a soft touch from Lumis brought more agony than any physical torture he could devise. "How much do you think I could hurt you without harming your body?" Lumis asked, his voice calm and smooth and dripping with hate, and Maul shivered, his eyes rolling in the back of his head as the Sith's shadowy hand pressed into his mind and began sifting through his memories. In the beginning, he had resisted, and Lumis had broken his mind for it. Now, Maul couldn't resist if he tried.

"Master," he gasped, body tensing and shaking when the Sith pulled from the deepest places of his mind for his most painful memories and forced them to the front of his thoughts. It was a plea, a desperate one that he knew had no hope of being heard, but it was pulled from his raw throat regardless as his memories played before him, tearing open old wounds and forgotten suffering and exposing him not just to the mental anguish, but forced him to relive the shadows of his physical suffering as the Dark Side pulsed through him like poison, an ally to Lumis, not to Maul. He choked back the screams, the pitiful noises coming out as pained whimpers. He couldn't scream if he wanted to, not anymore. With a final look of disgust at the convulsing creature, Lumis rose, slowly strode to the center of the room, and knelt, Dooku coming to kneel beside him a moment later when the doors swung open and Darth Sidious walked in, his hood pulled back and his yellow eyes darting about the room in a quick examination of his surroundings.

"Master..." Lumis and Tyranus chanted in unison, echoed a moment later by Maul in a frantic, pained whimper. Sidious ignored his former apprentice, gestured for the other two Sith to rise, which only Dooku did. Sidious' fingers ran through Lumis' hair when he came to stand beside him, the apprentice leaning his head against the Master's leg, and Dooku frowned. As far as plans for killing their Master went, it wasn't looking good.

"I have good news," Sidious said softly, a faint smile on his lips as his eyes drifted to Kenobi's pet rancor chewing on the writhing Maul's legs. "The fall of Mandalore is working to our advantage." Lumis shivered, but his face remained expressionless. "Thousands of contested systems suddenly thrust into the galaxy, and it has given us a much bigger area to fight in. The Jedi are spread thin, very few remain in the Temple. Only the younglings and the Masters they need to stay behind and coordinate the war effort."

"Yoda remains?" Dooku asked, and the rancor raised his head, looked at the Sith Lords, than gleefully resumed his chewing. Sidious nodded.

"In deep meditation, though I do not know why. Recent meetings have not been discussed with me."

"Do they suspect you, Master?" Dooku asked, and Sidious laughed.

"Hardly, my old friend. They have been set on edge by something else." Sidious looked down at Lumis, but the apprentice didn't move, didn't register anything on his handsome face. "Lumis."

"Master," he said without moving, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

"It's a great tragedy that we lost the child that was to be my apprentice in our empire," Sidious said smoothly, and Lumis shook, his hand tightening with rage, his gold eyes narrowing and darting furiously to Maul, who began suddenly thrashing, his hoarse screams sounding through the room. The Master grinned, breathed deep of the Dark Side that rose up like a sudden flood. It was a shame about what had happened, but the loss was more than made up for by what he got in return. "But this is no permanent loss. We can begin again. We-"

"No."

Sidious' hand tightened in Lumis' hair, a flash of rage running through the Master at the swift finality of his apprentice's answer. "No?" he repeated in disbelief.

"No." Lumis shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching as his golden eyes closed, his face filling with anger and pain. "I won't do it. I can't, not again..."

Sidious scoffed. "You can, Lumis. And you will. You are a virile young man that produced a child so strong in the Dark Side that I felt its conception. The children you sire will be fearsome. One doesn't need love to make your seed take root, Lumis."

"I know that, Master, I-"

"There are no shortage of women that want you. Line them up and take them all." Sidious shrugged. "Take the ones that don't want you, for all I care, you can make them do as you wish anyway."

"This isn't the point!" Lumis snapped, pulling away from his Master's grasp and rising to his feet to put some distance between himself and the Sidious. "You can't make a Dark Side child worthy of the Sith on just any woman! She needs to be exceptional! It worked with Satine because Satine is-"

"Satine was," Sidious corrected, and for a moment, Lumis looked lost, confused as if he had forgotten, as if he had slipped back into himself from a week ago, before his world was shattered. Then, the Force exploded in a supernova of fury and agony, and Dooku stepped closer to his Master, hands over his ears to block out the deafening howl of the Dark Side as it tore through the air like a savage wind. He looked at Lumis, his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his hands balled into tight fists in his sandy blond hair, his body wound so tightly that his muscles shook with the tension of the Force rushing through him. The rancor, docile and content before, was suddenly roaring in fury, his large, black eyes quickly staining a glowing red and yellow from the flood of the Dark Side bleeding through his connection with the Sith Lord, a frantic Maul left forgotten on the ground to thrash and scream under the unrelenting wrath of the Force.

When the thick windows separating the comfortable room from the heavy, hot air of the lava flows outside began to violently shake, the glass threatening not to crack but to shatter under the weight of the Force, Dooku looked at his Master and found him...content, a cruel smile on his face, his yellow eyes glowing with hunger and greed and power, and realization dawned on the older apprentice. There was always a reason, a method behind the things the Master did, and now, Sidious was testing a weapon. Slowly, Lumis' breaths evened, the shaking in his body lessening, his tight grip in his hair easing as he opened his eyes, blazing with rage that was not controlled, but contained as his focus returned. Dooku allowed himself to breathe again when the rancor pounced upon Maul once again.

"Satine was," Lumis began again, his accented voice tight with anger and quivering with emotion he could not repress, "remarkable. She has..." He growled again, his fist clenching tightly. "She had everything we needed to make what we had possible. We will not find her equal."

Sidious shrugged. "Perhaps you are right," he conceded, and Lumis relaxed his body, though his rage did not abate. "Regardless, it does not need to be now. We shall keep our options open." Lumis didn't answer, but he visibly relaxed, inclining his head toward the Master. "Were you left to your own devices, Lumis, what would you do now?"

His face darkened, and the Force swelled around him, surrounding him in a cold, focused blaze. "Revenge," he growled, and Sidious chuckled in delight. "The crime lords that did this will pay. I will root them out and destroy them all. And the Jedi..." His breath hitched as he felt the Force pulse within him, snarling and vicious and wanting for blood. The Force had been on fire. He had been on fire, powerless to stop it, and he had burned, was still burning, and knew he would until there was nothing left within him but ash and darkness to remain in the absence of flames. He hated everything. The Jedi that betrayed him and now hunted him. The indifferent, selfish, corrupt galaxy. The cowardly criminals that banded together into an army just to kill one woman. The Force itself, for abandoning him, for answering his cries for help with silence, for showing him visions - lies - of all that would be, but now never could. But most of all, he hated himself for being too weak to stop it.

"I want it to burn..." he growled, his heart beating in time with the Dark Side as it poured itself thick within him. "I want it all to burn. This entire galaxy, everything living within it, I want it all to burn with me."

Sidious grinned, his eyes glinting with sinister joy, but Dooku felt...apprehensive. They had talked about building an empire ruled by the rise of the Sith Order, but that wasn't what Lumis talked about. His was a path of destruction.

"And from the ashes, we will build a new world, my apprentices," Sidious rasped, seeming to sense Dooku's concern, and both apprentices' bowed their heads.

"As you say, my Master..." Lumis said softly, golden eyes suddenly filling with anger, and Sidious shivered in delight when he felt the Dark Side rise once again, just as strong as before. "And I'm starting with Anakin Skywalker."

"Skywalker hunts you," Sidious said softly, amused, interested, and Lumis snarled in frustration.

"He will never find me. Not until I want him to, not until I'm ready."

"If you need help killing him..." Dooku started, but was quickly cut off by a vicious glare accompanied by the firm hand of the Dark Side, but he grit his teeth and held strong.

"I said I would make him burn. He will suffer all I have and more." Lumis ran his hands through his hair, eyes closed and groaning softly as he embraced the power of the Dark Side and all the pain, hatred and pleasure that went along with it. "Everything, everything that I have ever suffered for has been his doing. He took my Master from me, he set me on the path to the Dark Side, the Force..." He growled and inhaled a shaking breath as red began to stain the edges of his golden eyes. "The Force brought me to the Sith in response to him. I have always known that to be true. And if I hadn't been off dealing with him, I would have been on Mandalore, I could have fought back that Sith pretender, and I could have saved Satine."

The Sith were silent for a moment as Lumis shook, his body willfully ravaged by the Dark Side while the other two watched the raging storm of the Force around them. It wasn't disturbed, though it's thrashing was causing vast waves that would extend into ripples across the entire fabric of the Force, so much so that Dooku was certain the Jedi could feel it all the way on Coruscant. The Dark Side was angry with the mindless fury of a beast that had been wronged and injured, and now it lashed out at everything that drew near in an attempt to right itself. This was Maul's doing, but Skywalker was close enough to the event to be caught in the flames of the Sith's wrath.

Lumis had always sat in the center of the Force, had been a conduit through which it freely flowed through, but before, there had been control. Before, they could see where the man ended and the Force began, though the distinction had always been a bit blurry. Now, all pretense of control had been surrendered, the fresh stab of pain forcing the man to embrace it all, and it brought him closer to the Dark Side. Dangerously close. Slowly, Sidious began to smile.

"You would make Skywalker suffer?" Sidious asked, though his voice was distant as he narrowed his focus on Lumis. He gasped softly as he reached out and grabbed hold of his young apprentice's mind and felt the vortex of the Dark Side draw him in with a pull so strong that he nearly tumbled into the throes of the Force, but with a tight breath, he caught himself, centered himself in Lumis' presence, and allowed the pleasure of such power to wash over him.

"Nobody will suffer as he has by the time I am through with him. Before I am done, Anakin Skywalker will beg me to kill hm. I will take everything from him, just as he did to me."

Dooku felt the air rush out of him, felt the Force itself pulled from his grasp as Lumis' focus returned, his red-rimmed gold eyes blazing with purpose and meaning that had been lost to him since Mandalore fell. Before, he had existed in a mindless haze in the grasp of the Dark Side, expending his unfocused wrath on Maul, or anything else that got in his way, and when the pain became too much, his consciousness would retreat deep within himself and allow the Force to move him. But now, his rage was given a target, a focus, and it sharpened him, the young Sith drawing in as much of the Force as he could take to feed his anger.

"How do you suppose to do that?" Sidious asked with genuine interest, his head tilted slightly as he observed his apprentice. He had gotten close to Anakin Skywalker through his association with Tarkin, but young Skywalker had always been...difficult. He had caught the attention of the Sith Master early on, but Qui-Gon's influence in the Knight had been keenly felt. He was uniquely equipt to deal with life, not as a Jedi, but as a person, and it made him dangerous. But if Lumis made good on his word, if he could somehow focus his rage and refine it into a weapon against Skywalker...

His fall may not be so difficult to engineer.

"It's simple enough," Lumis growled. "If I didn't have to deal with him, if I..." He growled and gripped his head in his hands, eyes clenched as if fighting off pain deep within him. "He helped take Satine away from me, he didn't do it but it's his fault." His hands fell to his side, and all the anger and pain dropped from his face, leaving his body relaxed and his expression blank, and for a moment, Dooku thought that the Force had taken him, as it so often did. With a shudder, a small, cruel smile tugged at the edge of his lips, and his shoulders began to shake with silent laughter. "I'll need your help, Dooku," Lumis said softly. "I need to get in touch with Cad Bane. There's someone I need him to get for me. I'm going to splinter the Jedi, and I'll need every Dark Jedi I can get."

The Count nodded. "I'll contact him immediately."

"And Skywalker," Lumis hissed. "The woman I love is gone. I can't see why he should have what I cannot." A malicious grin slowly spread across his face, cold and cruel and Sidious could feel himself relax into the feelings of satisfaction as they rushed through him. "You may get that apprentice you wanted after all, Master."

"You have a woman in mind?" he asked, and Lumis' eyes seemed to grow distant as he slowly nodded. It had been a long time since he had seen her, but from the start, her passion had reminded him of his Satine, and there had always been something of an attraction between them. It would be a simple thing to reawaken her lust for him, and an even simpler thing to get her to act upon it, even if she was in love with Skywalker. Lumis hoped she was. It would make her seduction to his side so much sweeter. He pushed aside any reservations he may have had about it, the pain in his chest igniting to become a persistent dull ache as he thought about his last night with Satine, how complete he had felt inside her, the beautiful darkness of their son, her barely audible last words to him as she lay dying. His heart was gone with her, and his body was simply a tool, and tools were meant to be used.

He'd have to make certain he could bring himself to do it, to keep himself in the moment, to surrender to his passions, his physical desires, no matter what ghosts may plague him. Ghosts were a weakness, and Satine was never weakness to him. He would never allow her to become such. With a deep breath, he centered himself, his anger burning away everything but the desire for revenge. He'd have it soon. Anakin Skywalker would suffer, and it would start with Padmé Amidala.