"The Dark Lady of the Sith takes pity on the weak." Phobos reared back her head and laughed. That shrill harpy's caw of hers glanced off every wall in Cinder's chambers before hurtling like sharpened knives toward her ears.
Cinder was thankful she sent Bestia to the cockpit with Fell. For a fleeting moment, Cinder had debated showing her the holocron, introducing her to this Sith sorceress of old. Reason prevailed, and she set Bestia to making Fell's acquaintance. They ought know each other if we are to fight together.
"What of it?" Cinder knelt before the holocron and basked in its red glow. Her eyes were closed, though the ones in her mind remained wide open, eager and willing for any atrocity the Lady of Fear meant to feast them. "Our strength is our cunning. Our ability to not just embrace the shadows, but to be one with them. Do you not agree, witch?"
"Do you always choose your allies so poorly?" Phobos said. "Open your eyes and face me, weakling, else I will give you ought of which to be afraid."
Cinder obeyed. The more she called upon Phobos, Cinder noticed more and more that the witch's projection grew smaller. Is it an illusion, or something more nefarious? "I could kill her now if I wanted to," Cinder said. "What difference does it make? She bears no threat."
"Not yet." Phobos raised a barbed finger. "She is Sith, like you. She wants after power. Once you two are done with your Dark Lord, she will betray you." Her face contorted into a dagger-toothed grin. "As will the boy."
"This I know." Cinder kept her face plain though she knew Phobos would see right through her all the same. She had been right about everything thus far. Still, much as she knew it to be true, she could not consider Fell to be a threat. He needs be prepared when he comes for me.
"This girl is rash. Bloodthirsty. I see what haunts her, the trauma wound that lingers gaping and festering in her mind's eye." Phobos licked her lips with a darting, snakelike tongue. "Why did you send her away from me?"
"You know already." Cinder closed her eyes once more.
"Keep your eyes open or I will pry the lids apart."
"You would fail in any case," Cinder said without paying her any mind. "You are bound to that infernal machine. Even if she was willing to be a conduit, it would not work."
"So little faith." Phobos' words melded with a screaming torrent of wind.
Cinder found herself in a chasm, a bottomless abyss surrounding her on all sides. Mammoth walls slick with grease closed her in. Occasionally, faint purple tendrils of smoke would creep in from the gaping maw.
She heard the clatter of metal and chains ring out at her feet. She almost stumbled headlong into the deep when she looked down and saw the irons that bound her ankles together. There was a sharp ring and another pair snared her wrists. Across from her, several figures began to materialize from the void, misshapen and oblong shades of purple, black, and dark blue. And yet, messy as they were, she found a glint of familiarity within the bounds of each one.
There was a crackle across the blackened void of the sky followed by a woman's voice, biting and shrill. "There is still much you must learn."
"Not from you," Cinder said as she struggled against the chains.
"Teach her!" A jagged sword of red lightning snapped down in front of the leftmost apparition. The shapeless lump vanished in a field of red flame and what took its place was...
"Phanius?" Cinder forgot herself.
"I have not gone by that name in years," Ruin said as he looked at her from across the chasm. His gray-blue skin swallowed the light of the flames, though the metal band that crowned him eagerly drank them up and shone them back at her. "You of all people should know that, Lysara."
He is not real, do not waste the effort. Save it for the real thing. She stayed silent.
"You will be here soon to kill me," Ruin continued. He stuck out a foot limply over the chasm and let it hang there a bit. "Good. I've earned it. There will be such a sight for you to see."
"You... you're giving up" Cinder was too dumbstruck not to keep it to herself. Is this what I fear? That he won't put up a fight?
"My purpose is served. He will be pleased to meet you." Suddenly, he produced his lightsaber in his left hand and made a quick slash towards his throat. His head fell into the abyss, and the body followed in a robes mass of flailing limbs.
He? A worthy opponent shows his face, she recalled. Could it be?
Cinder blinked and the next fork of lightning struck. Marcus Kregg strolled forward with a scoundrel's swagger as the flaming blob became one with the void around it.
"I'm enslaved to the Hutts, Lysara," he said in that queer accent of his, the singsong lilt of Fondor. "There's nothing I can do to help you. One girl in me life's more than enough, besides. Don't hold it against me; 'tis what smugglers do."
"You're not the betraying sort," she found herself saying, though she didn't know why. "I would've sensed it."
"Aye, well, you've been doing a right poor job of that lately." He had his fingers wrapped around the grip of a peculiar sidearm strapped on his right hip. "There's one right underneath yer nose and you ain't sniffed her out yet."
"A traitor?"
"In a sense." In one swift motion, he brought the gun out of its holster and bored a smoking hole through the side of his head. He slumped to the floor, though his lips kept moving. "Tell me something: you think the Hutts would take you in exchange for my freedom? Durgulla's girls tell me slavery ain't so bad." With that, his eyes closed for good and his body disintegrated into wisps of black ash. Lightning struck thrice.
Lady Bestia sauntered forward, brandishing her crimson lightsaber with its short hilt. "Before you ask, no, it's not me, Lady Cinder." She pointed the blade straight at Cinder's forehead, though it felt like naught but hot air. Still, she felt a fat bead of sweat eke its way out. "But you do have another woman on your ship."
She had sensed it indeed, though she had not yet had time to act. "You don't lurk in the confines of my skull to warn me of a stowaway," Cinder said.
"You need to let go of your past and embrace the present."
"The past is what makes us who we are, Mira."
"Darth Bestia is who I am now, regardless of what I told you. And one day, you will lose me the same way you have lost everyone else you love."
"Don't lie to me." Cinder gnawed on her lip. She knew none of this was real and yet she felt the cracks appear all the same. "Make an end of it now if you're so certain."
"In due time," Bestia said. She threw the lightsaber in a curved arc towards Cinder. It went around her neck, the tip of the blade missing by mere millimeters, before coming back around the other side and carving its way through Bestia's chest. She blew Cinder a kiss as she tumbled down in pieces into the maw.
This is all folly, Cinder thought. My own doubts are being used against me and I am powerless to stop this. She attempted to reach out to the Force, to find some way to calm herself, but there was no life here. She was trapped in the Void, and there was nothing here. She tried closing her eyes, but she felt the pinprick of several barbed needles shove them back open.
"Master?"
Fell was staring at her with those sharp brown eyes of his. The sharp angles of his long face caught the smoldering embers of the fire nipping at the void behind him. She caught the gleam of his saber hilt. He had not yet activated the blade.
"Say what you wish to say," she said flatly. "I know already."
"You've prepared me for this moment." Fell set his saber whirring to life. "There is still so much to learn from you, and yet..." He trailed off as he leveled the saber towards her throat. The heat stretched out with fiery tendrils to stab her neck. "You are too weak to teach me anymore."
"Weak?" Cinder struggled against the chains, cringing as they rattled back at her. "Even bound I am stronger than you."
"So strong that you will not let me go?"
"I will do what I must, boy. For the good of our empire."
"Your empire will be only that of ashes in your mouth," he said, though it was not his voice that spoke. Now it was wrapped within Phobos' own. The witch herself appeared behind Fell, double-bladed lightsaber in hand, and bisected him bottom to top in a single swing. "There will be nothing but dust in your wake. Ruin was the seed of our demise and you are his fruit. Tell me it isn't so, though it won't free you from this waking nightmare."
Phobos stepped through Fell's body as it turned to dust and held her weapon in front of her, deactivating both blades with a sharp hiss. Both of the portholes spat wisps of grey smoke, just visible against the pitch black void.
"You don't believe me, do you?" Phobos tossed the hilt into the abyss and sat cross-legged before Cinder. "It's alright to be afraid. To know just how weak you are."
"I am not weak," Cinder said. She felt the chains around her wrists snap at last. She tried to summon her lightsaber to her, but found her hands empty.
"Did you hear and not listen? They all spoke true."
"They spoke of doubts that are of no guarantee."
"You must find the truths adrift within the sea of lies."
But which are the lies and which are the truths? The doubts that plagued her subconscious offered little distinction. Even still, I must admit nothing to this creature. She knew steeling herself would do no good; the witch would wrench the secrets from her mind and see all she wished to see. "What the boy says is true," Cinder said at last. "This I know. All that I have done has been to prepare him for his final test."
"And yet you fear for him." Phobos sneered and bared her teeth. "You love him like a son. You must move past this weakness if you are to wear a crown."
Right as Phobos may have been, Cinder would never admit it. "You had a cult five thousand strong, if that wasn't a lie. What do you know of having nothing?"
Phobos let out a harsh giggle at that. "I speak only truths. Surely you must be aware that you do not have nothing yet, Dark Lady? That is a gift you shall receive only when the time is right."
"Speak sense or be gone from my head."
"Your journey is just beginning." Phobos got to her feet and Cinder felt the irons unclasp around her own. The Theelin stepped forward and clapped a hand on Cinder's shoulder, grinning. "I ask again, did you hear and not listen?"
"Ruin knows he will die. What of it?" Cinder raised an eyebrow. "He spoke of another."
"You felt the festering wound open, did you not?" Phobos turned her head and the two locked eyes. "I understand it now. Spirited away and bound to a box I may be, but I am not stupid, Lady Cinder." She reached under Cinder's chin and grabbed her, jamming her fingers against the bones of her jaw and the flesh of her cheeks. "You ask me of wounds in the Force, you talk to me of Kreia's Folly. You sensed it just as I have beyond the pale."
"'A worthy opponent shows his face'," Cinder repeated the words back to her. "But who? Or what?"
Phobos released her grip. "You still don't understand." She turned around, and Cinder her dress was backless. Dark green scales wore intricate black trim. The tabard bound at her hips ended abruptly just before the flat heels of her cloven feet. "Perhaps it will take more cowing. Harsher lessons." There were no words between them.
"Cinders on thy tongue and ashes in your mouth," Phobos said at last. She snapped her fingers and the void disappeared, swirling in on itself.
Cinder's eyes jolted open and she caught herself before she fell flat on her back. She saw the holocron in front of her. The red glow was gone, the runes carved throughout reduced to empty ravines.She kicked it across the room with her heel. Stay in your box and out of my head. There was the rattling sound of metal-on-metal at the door, the tapping of a series of spindly metallic fingers coming down in rhythm.
"Admission: Master," HK-47 said from outside the door. "Forgive me, but I am being forced to 'check up' on you by your manservant. He instructed me to cut this door open should you not come. Aside: Luckily for him, you removed my plasma cutter, as if I would obey him in any case."
She reached out with the Force and deactivated the lock on the door. It slid open with a sharp hiss, revealing HK-47's rust-red chassis standing behind it. His head swiveled side-to-side aimlessly as he waited in place. He seemed to find her on the second rotation (that she counted, anyway) and began to make his approach.
"Astonishment: Master, are you alright?" There was a tinge of genuine concern in the droid's voice as he stepped forward and stooped down on one knee before her. Cinder realized in that moment she was still clad in the dingy, moldering robes that had seen battle on Malastare. The fingers on her right hand were scabbed over in burgundy and yellow. Her shoes had been removed; almost on reflex, she tucked her feet under her thighs. Worst of all, she stunk like an unwashed nerf. This was the first time she noticed the smell, and it was like to make her retch.
"Begone," she said. "Tell Lord Fell I will be with him shortly."
"Affirmation: Yes, master. I will let him know you are preoccupied." He stood at once and walked out the way he came in. Right before he finished rounding the corner of the door frame, HK-47 stopped. "Addendum: We are due to arrive in Hutt Space within one standard hour. It would behoove you to be in the cockpit to give orders upon our arrival." With that, the droid clattered off towards the cockpit. She hoped, anyway.
Cinder winced as she got to her feet. Her knees throbbed, her shins ached. Mandalore had been a hard enough opponent, but she did not think it was their duel that had done the brunt of the damage. She walked over to the keypad on the wall and her fingers danced to spell out a code. One of her walls loosed with an unlatching sound before rotating and revealing a refresher. She stepped inside, sealing the glass door behind her, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
A worthy opponent shows his face. She pondered those words as the water poured over her. Every time she repeated the line, she thought she heard Phobos titter within her skull. I am haunted enough; there is scarce room enough for you as well. She pounded her head against the wall and held it there for a time. She felt liquid worm its way down her cheek. Whether it was water or tears, she did not know. Nor did she really care.