Ruin leaned back in his chair. He was alone, nestled in the conference room off the starboard side of the Solipsis' bridge. It was spartan, with three walls of grey metal and one of glass. A solitary table stood in the center, its top patterned in the sloping shape of a coffin. Two shrunken shadow trees from Umbara stood guard at the exit. In the room's pale light, their scarlet leaves glittered with flecks of silver and dust.
He delivered his speech the night before to a full contingent of troopers at the head of the bridge. Kaos was nowhere to be found, though he spied Bestia towards the back of the crowd. Keeping far away from me, I see. His words had been few, but the applause rattled for what felt like ages.
Their flattery is mindless and indulgent. The lesser soldiers were bumbling yes-men, who believed they owed him fealty due to his choice to unite the Sith clans. The Lost Tribes offered gratitude only in the form of feeble bodies and empty heads. He knew they watched him when they thought him unawares. Even the lowest of the low sought an easy way to the top. At least they understand that much.
Still, they made his head throb until it ran raw. They laugh at me.
"And they will until you give them reason to do elsewise." The voice echoed through his head as if wreathed in a mess of garbled static. Ruin winced and slumped forward in his chair. The shoddy stalk holding it up bent and his head met the overhanging side of the metal table.
He got back on his feet, unsteady, and staggered over to a different seat. He tasted blood on his lips as it trickled down from a small cut above his eyebrow. He wondered how many of the fools outside had seen his fall. How many will laugh? He rubbed a finger against the cut. I will kill any who so much as slip a grin. Examples will be made.
"Would you though, Dark Lord?" The voices words made his wound sear like caustic wildfire. "Or would you just stand back and sulk? Would you let them mock you, and your feeble attempts to rule this fledgling order?"
If you must belittle me in the confines of my own head, Ruin's own inner voice bit back, at least grant me the dignity to know what you are.
The voice grew sharp, like a hammer driving a nail into his gray matter. "You know nothing. A simpleton cannot hope to rule a galaxy."
What - are - you? The voice had gnawed at his brain for the better part of ten years, though always as a helping hand. Over the past few weeks, its timbre had grown sharp. It spoke now only to vex and annoy, dripping with venom.
"Perhaps in time you will know." Pulsing tremors ran across the wrinkles of his brain. "You acted in haste, Lord Ruin. Most would not jump so readily to serve. I applaud your tenacity."
I do not need the applause of a specter. He slumped down towards the table and let the cold metal surface kiss his wound.
"You lead your order to a new beginning." The soothing touch disappeared at once and the pain flared. "You go to Rhen Var as I instructed."
Ruin grimaced. I have abandoned our homeworld and mine eyes and ears. His thoughts jumped to Cinder. Earlier in the morning, deep in meditation, he had felt her presence within the veil of the Force. Yet it was fleeting; he needed a proper confirmation that she yet lived.
"Your eyes and ears still yet remain." For a moment, Ruin thought his skull was about to burst. Stinging tears crept from his eyes as they burned. "You are Dark Lord. It is pointless to be attached to something that can be so easily replaced. You will come to find that the hands do not always work in the mind's best interest. Besides, she is a Sith, bred for betrayal. You-"
Be silent. Ruin would not take it. She will never betray me, and she will return to me. Either by her own hand or elsewise. His mind grew bitter at even the suggestion. I am the Sith. All here belong to me, even her.
When the voice laughed, it felt as if an avalanche rumbled between Ruin's ears.
"Think what you may," the voice said. "All we are is betrayal, Lord Ruin."
He slammed the table with a balled fist. I am the Sith, Ruin repeated. It was I who restored the order, I who led the charge, I who swore to pass down the teachings of the ancient dark lords and their sires. When I reach you, demented demon-thing, I will make sure you learn this. These whelps are nothing. I am the Sith.
"Perhaps I misjudge you," the voice said. It returned to the friendly cadence it once had all those years ago, the tone of an old man grown wise and content. "Perhaps when once we meet, you shall awe me yet.
"But there is more to being Dark Lord than kicking your baying hounds. You have murdered your foremost experienced man, all because he wounded your pride."
Ruin shook his head and rubbed his eyes. Hopel was old and weak besides. We will not need him any longer.
"Be that as it may, you have lost a valuable card in your deck. His tribe was the largest of our clans, and with his death they will seek a way to unbind themselves from your shaky union. They ask themselves the question, 'Are we led by a madman?'" The voice paused for a moment. "Are they?"
They undermine me, voice. The only sound he could hear were his own teeth grinding. I will not abide this.
"How do you hope to replace them? There are no men where we are going."
"Not yet," he said aloud. He glanced over his shoulder out towards the bridge. There was an ensign staring at him through the glass. Another bridge officer met her and the two walked off together.
"Let them stare." The voice sounded almost as weary as he was. "Focus on the task at hand, I beseech you. Free me from my prison and I will grant you all the power you need to seize revenge upon the Jedi."
Ruin sighed. Revenge? I do not intend to destroy them, you fool. I only need them to understand the way things truly are.
"The order has been set in its ways for five thousand years."
Five and thirty joined my cause in one day. There had been whispers among the cadets that even more Jedi had split from the order, with the number growing higher each passing day.
"Most all of whom are dead. Two of your scions and your squire still yet remain, but the one you prize most is lost to the galactic aether."
She will be found yet. You know this as well as I do.
The voice chuckled and the little laughs bounced around his skull like hail. "She will come back to you, yes. But will she still be the woman you left to die?"
I am a poor leader if my own Shadow Hand attempts a mutiny. He knew Cinder would never betray him. They had been close for twenty years, ever since he took her to apprentice back on Coruscant. He had been Phanius then, and she Lysara, but the bond between them never withered as they dived headlong into the abyss of the Dark Side. When he left the Jedi Order, she went with him, and the two became the first of a new dynasty of Sith, the first Darths in over a thousand years. What is your insistence on misleading me?
"The hand does not always act in chorus with the mind. Amputate and replace, Lord Ruin. Let it be me when the time comes."
Why?
"You no longer wish for my good counsel?"
Ruin chuckled aloud. Has a Dark Lord ever had two hands?
The voice tittered and faded away into an echo, as if it had never been there in the first place.
Ruin's laughter continued, increasing in intensity with each passing moment. He stumbled from his chair and he dared not stifle his laughing fit. He saw the officers outside, staring vacantly at him, but he chose not to care. Their mouths hung agape as he stared back and howled with mirth. This is your lord, worms. The laughing fit ceased. He got to his feet and dusted himself off.
Darth Kaos greeted him outside the door. An oblong bruise in dark purple discolored the left side of his face. Why has this imbecile not yet left?
"My lord," Kaos said in his frothy, gurgling voice. Basic did not come easy for him; his mouth was designed for the Quarren tongue of his native Dac. "Our scouts have confirmed our suspicions. The Republic has fully seized Korriban."
"Pray tell Lord Kaos," Ruin said to the walls as they strolled the empty corridor, "I thought this was already known."
"Of course, my lord," Kaos said. He cleared his throat into a clawed hand. "You might wish to know this, then: The Jedi plunder the Valley of the Dark Lords. Their search for artifacts is eager, though we do not know if their labor has borne any fruit."
"A tragic loss," Ruin muttered. He and Cinder had spent years on Korriban scouring the valley and its tombs for artifacts and treasures, tomes and ancient knowledge. Most of the artifacts were safe here on the Solipsis. All that weren't, Cinder no doubt had in her possession. He changed the subject. "Who governs Korriban in our place?"
Kaos's beard of tentacles twitched. "That is where things take a turn, Dark Lord. The Jedi were going to hand full control of our citadel to Master Sivu Horace, who-"
"Who passed last month, yes." Ruin rolled his eyes. It had made Ruin giddy when he heard of Horace's demise. "Wag your tongue less and get to the point."
"They planned to replace Horace with his apprentice, Leide Pall of Corellia, who was also given his seat on the Jedi High Council. It appears the prospective Lady of Korriban had an accident in the hangar bay. A single vessel escaped."
Ruin stopped and Kaos nearly bumped into him.
"Do go on, Lord Kaos." The darkness of the corridor hid Ruin's rotten teeth as he smiled.
"Lady Cinder's Ashen One was sighted leaving the hangar after the Jedi and her soldiers were slaughtered. Now the governorship-"
"May the Force damn the governorship of Korriban," Ruin spat. "Lady Cinder is alive." I knew it was her I felt. "What else have your spiders seen?"
Kaos swallowed. "Most of our eyes and ears were slaughtered. Those that made it to space were shot down by the Republic blockade."
"How convenient." Ruin scoffed and shook his head. Breath ran out his mouth as his heat rose. He fell upon Kaos and started jabbing a finger repeatedly into his chest. "Tell me. If Lady Cinder is the sole survivor of this massacre, how did she escape? Suppose I do not wish to accept blind luck as an answer." Or her resourcefulness. "Tell me now."
Kaos flinched with each jab. "She blasted her way through the inside of a Hammerhead, Dark Lord."
She continues to astound, Ruin thought, chuckling. "And how is this known?"
"I have other bugs as well," Kaos said, cracking a smile. "A mole in the Republic navy, stationed aboard that vessel. He was badly burned during Lady Cinder's assault on the hangar. He relayed to me this information from the medbay, where he unfortunately succumbed to his wounds."
Fortunately, you mean. Ruin turned away from Kaos and lifted a hand. "Begone."
"One more thing, my lord," Kaos called out as Ruin began to walk away. Ruin stopped, but did not turn to face him.
"Before the fire rendered him infirm, our man placed a tracking beacon on The Ashen One's landing gear." Kaos let out an ugly wheeze that might have resembled a laugh. "Don't worry, I'm not wasting any of your officers' time on this. I have a cadet on it. He'll match the beacon frequency and I'll be after her as soon as I'm able."
"This is good, Lord Kaos." Ruin smile was wan, but he dared not show it to Kaos. "We are due for arrival in a couple days. You are not to leave until we have landed."
He paused for a moment, and Kaos tried to scurry away. One click of his teeth was enough to make Kaos stop in his tracks.
"You have proven some level of worth to me after all." For now. "Say nothing of this to Lady Bestia. You may go." Ruin crooked his fingers to wave him away.
"Dark Lord," Kaos said with a little bow. His steps faded as he made his way back towards the bridge. Doubtless to cavort with that cadet.
That night, Ruin retired to his quarters and cracked open a bottle of spiced wine. It was a vintage from Byss, one of two bottles he had intended to share with Cinder on some distant day. I'll share with her spirit in the veil, he thought as he took a sip. After he finished, he threw the bottle into the wall and cackled as it smashed to pieces. As his serving droid cleaned up the mess, he slumped against the sheets, and fell into a deep sleep.
The voice didn't hound him at all that night.