Rey felt lost, even though she knew exactly where she was going. She walked through a labyrinth that would have been impossible to navigate but for the string she followed; the call of the artifact, luring her onwards and deeper. As she descended into the planet, doubts and fears nagged at her with growing insistence; why was she wandering further and further from home and safety, as if searching in vain for an answer to a question she struggled to form. And had she gone too far to find her way back?

It was difficult to know how long she'd been walking, but it must have been more than an hour, through vast empty spaces utterly devoid of any sign of life, smooth planes of dark volcanic rock meeting at sharply cut corners, full of random seeming slopes, turnings and offshoots. Rey employed the saber as a lantern, but the Temple was also dimly lit by regularly spaced points of cold white light, sometimes in the walls, sometimes the ceilings or floors.

Some spaces were so wide and low that she had to stoop, some so slender and tall that they brushed both of her shoulders as she gazed upwards to where the walls of the shaft disappeared into the gloom above. But mostly the dimensions were immense in all directions, the scale of its corridors and rooms absurd, dwarfing her, reducing a girl to an insect, weak and vulnerable.

She remembered tales of Monoliths, gigantic creatures spawned by the Dark Side, mutated by Sith alchemy: a use of the Force so feared and forbidden that it was almost taboo among Jedi. Perhaps these corridors were created to accommodate them. She felt a chill as she imagined one of the Sithspawn waiting in silence around the next dark corner, ready to crush her; there would be no escape, nowhere to run.

Or perhaps the intention of this place was to intimidate, to impress upon the visitor their insignificance in comparison to the Force that bound the universe?

Or perhaps they were the result of randomness. Didn't Sith believe that chaos was a gateway to strength? Something like that. Strength. This place was in itself a show of the raw strength they worshipped; an enormous power wielded to create a space thousands of times larger than it needed to be.

Or perhaps she shouldn't spend too much time wondering about the workings of the Sith mind.

The spaces were empty, as far as she could see. Huge flat planes of featureless stone that towered above her, like a monument to the most brutal minimalism. Rey found herself at a T-junction. The Force called her leftwards, but on turning to check the path to the right, she could discern that it contained not the usual blank, smooth walls, but something else, made vague by distance and shadow.

An instinct that she should have heeded urged her not to stray, to stay on the path, but curiosity moved her feet in the direction of one of the walls, advancing cautiously, holding the saber aloft to cast its golden light. She was barely 20-30 paces from it now, but it still wasn't clear what it was. She needed to be closer. She had to see. She edged nearer, warily squinting into the shadows. Nearer still.

How long Rey studied it before she understood what she was looking at, was difficult to say. Too long. It was difficult to grasp, the reality too foul for her mind to accept without putting up a struggle. Or maybe she'd known the instant she saw it, but had kept looking, kept examining it in closer detail, hoping that her eyes had deceived her and that it wasn't really what it appeared to be. Those couldn't be people. Surely. Because, why? Why would they be? What purpose could it serve? And what had been done to them?

The saber cast its glow on a small portion of a vast tableau of humans and machines. Her gaze traced the curves of bones and sinews as they merged with the dull metal of instruments shaped to echo their organic contours. Blood vessels branching into tubes that fed pistons and cylinders. Joints of bone fused with hinges and bearings. Skin wrapping both the skull it had grown around and the cables screwed into it. Bodies arranged, broken and twisted to align with unyielding mechanisms engineered to generate, distill and transmit suffering. The faces. They had not died peacefully here. How long had they screamed? Had they understood what was happening to them? How long before they had been allowed to die?

She tore herself away at last, wrenching herself free of the grip on her gaze exerted by horror and disbelief. Get back. Long strides, deep breaths and back to the path as quickly as possible. There was nothing here for her. Best to believe this was beyond reason, evil for its own sake, the purest most irredeemable sort that had to be eradicated at all costs, because what if they had a justification, something that could almost start to sound reasonable after it had been explained and repeated enough times? A solution to a problem that had to be solved for a greater good, at any cost, even if she'd never been aware of its existence. That was the worst kind of evil; the contagious kind.

Rey rejoined the route to the artifact without looking back. She tried not to look too closely into any more dark passageways, and to pay attention to the guidance of the Force, but twice more thought she caught glimpses in shadows of things that should never be, and turned away, gripped the saber tighter, her jaw set as she strode onward.

...

There it was again. Through the soles of her boots; a low, distant rumble, a bass note that resonated in her bones. The tremors had started about half an hour back, and came every few minutes now. Occasional drafts of heat flowed past. She was getting closer. Not far now.

...

The distant rumbles had become roars now, filling the temple with noise for seconds before being silenced. The blasts of heat that accompanied the sound had become more intense and when they came, it was as if she was feeling the slow, hot breath of the planet itself. The corner ahead was illuminated with a flickering red glow, and beyond that she sensed the artifact. She was there.


"This place is so fucked up," Finn walked quickly, keeping to the edges and corners of the vast, open voids of the temple, only crossing the floor when his route demanded it, only igniting the saber when he needed its light. To be in the center of its open spaces was to feel exposed and vulnerable, and not where he wanted to be. Who knew what kind of messed up shit was lurking around the next corner.

"So fucked up it's got me talking to myself," he'd seen holos of Sith Temples, but this was entirely different. Not even the most perfect images and audio could prepare him for being here, feeling how badly the Force was screwed up, how deep in the Dark Side he was, surrounded on every side by an evil that pervaded his senses, filled the air that he breathed. Every instinct screamed at him to turn around and run, claw his way out of this grave to the surface, signal Adra, leave this place and never return. But deeper he went. And deeper.

"Thanks, Rey." Finn traversed a wall, keeping his back to it, watching behind, checking ahead. This better be worth it. She better be absolutely on the verge of certain fucking death with no way out to make this worthwhile. Maybe lying on the ground in some insanely horrible Sith shrine at the end of this hyperdeathmaze, hurt and out of it but not in a life-threatening way. He'd pick her up, her eyes would flutter open. "You came," she would whisper. "Of course I came," he'd reply dismissively. "You really shouldn't have. I had it all under control," she'd protest as he carried her up to the surface, which would take some effort, but he'd manage. "I could just leave you to it then," he'd smile. "No, it's ok, carry on," and she would sigh into his shoulder. On the surface, she'd just about have enough strength to stand, with a steadying arm around her shoulders, as Adra piloted the Bakura Siren to land nearby. "I should reward you," she'd breathe, "Come here..." and she'd lean into him, her lips touching-

Fucks sake. Get a grip, dude.

Finn peeked around a corner. Another huge void ending extending out to what seemed to be a distant junction. Keep going.

No. He wished, he really, really wished that he'd get to the end of this and find her there with this Tantalus thing in her hand going "What the fuck are you doing here? They're all dead because I'm awesome. Come on, let's get a beer." Yes, he'd settle for that. That would be just wonderful, thanks. But it wasn't going to happen. He could feel it. She never should have come here, so was he right to follow? Finn strengthened his resolve, gripped his saber and marched onward, increasing his pace.

The closer he got, the clearer it became, resolving out of the gloom: a T-junction. An unmistakable pull in the Force told Finn she had gone to the left, but another emanation drew him to the right. Something ancient and faded, but now he focused he could sense it, mixed signals like a confusion of tastes on his tongue. Stood at the center of the junction, he peered into the gloom. The walls were different over there.

He'd closed half the distance to whatever it was before the sensations overwhelmed him. Terrible things had happened here. Pain and degradation stretched into unending suffering, souls swallowed whole by horrors perfected by Sith engineers over centuries. He didn't need to see this, didn't need to be here, and turned away, mouth dry, skin prickling, when he felt another call, underneath the suffering, fainter but distinct. An impression suspended in the Force like an echo of a Force Ghost, but weaker because the souls that made it weren't Jedi or adepts of any kind. As on the ocean of glass he'd walked on the surface, here were spirits trapped and ready for release.

He closed his eyes - he didn't need to see how they had come to their end - and walked forwards, arm outstretched, until his fingertips brushed skin, then cold metal. He steeled himself. This was going to be very unpleasant indeed, bad enough that he was unsure if he could bear it, and if he could, for how long. He needed to reach Rey, but the dead had waited so long. He had to do this, the right thing, as always.

Finn squeezed his eyes tighter shut, took a deep breath, and alone in the endless emptiness in the temple of pain at the end of the world, started the task of freeing the souls of the dead.