He stood at the front of the bridge. His supplicants were former Republic navy and forlorn Sith marines. They attended their tasks without so much as a word. Some ran about the bridge, frantically trying to get back to their posts lest they ignite the wrath of their Dark Lord. He smiled, though he didn't deign to show it. He was glad they feared him. He was Ruin, all at once the galaxy's center and the sum of all its fears. He was everything.
"Tell my cadre to assemble in amidships," he said to an officer stationed at one of the navigation consoles without so much as looking at them. At once, several voices answered his command.
He turned on a heel and waltzed down the length of the bridge. His boots made a dolorous clang on the black gunmetal floor. It had been doggedly polished by a host of slaves until it shone. The entire ship shone, just so he could see his reflection in every panel.
"As it should be," he had said when the slaves showed him their work. "So that you all may see your Dark Lord even when he chooses not to see you." Had that been weeks ago or years? he wondered as he reflected on it now.
He ceased his recollection when he approached the door. The black-clad Sith scions guarding it hailed at his approach. He paid them no mind as it clanged shut behind him. He made his way down a series of hallways, passing by several supply rooms containing all manner of items from medpacs to provisions. They had been well stocked in the days before Ruin and his cadre departed Korriban.
The round door to the conference room slid open with a sad little whine, and he found his Sith acolytes inside. All too few. A mere four were present of the twenty he had intended to bring.
"Do you know why I've assembled you here?" Ruin said to no one in particular. His voice was quaint and soft to the point where it scarce bounced off the shining metal walls.
His cadre eyed him for a bit as he took a seat at the other end of the room, far away from the slab table at which they had seated themselves. Darth Kaos spun around in his chair to look upon Ruin before he spoke.
"Aught troubles you, Dark Lord," the Quarren said. His skin was the purplish color of a bruise, his face scrawled in black tattoos bearing the markings of the ancient Sith species. "And for good reason: We have lost our citadel on Korriban, and our order is forced to flee from the onslaught wrought by the Jedi." Each of his words came out encased in globs of thick phlegm, as if he was dragging them up from the dregs of his throat.
Ruin bobbed his head in agreement. "A penchant for stating what we all know to be true, Lord Kaos," he said. He traced a finger over his blue face, then snapped his fingers. A serving droid whirred to life in some shadowy corner of the room before clattering its way over to hand him a cup of Umbaran spice wine.
"Not just the citadel," Darth Bestia added. "Korriban is lost completely." Her tone was hushed and her appearance was fragile. Stringy blonde hair hung limp over green skin that had long paled to the color of snot.
"My Shadow Hand," Ruin said, shaking his head. He rose from his seat, stretched out his free arm in some mummer's show of grief, and threw the cup of wine at Kaos. Wine dribbled down his angled dome in long fingers that trickled across the tentacles which bearded his fang-toothed mouth. He dared not wipe it away.
"Aye," the table resounded.
They hate her. They would sooner have her place at my side than have her back. Yet if I give them that, they shall only lust for more...
"My lords... and lady," he said, making his way around to the opposite side of the table, closer to the door. This time he set his eyes upon them all: Bestia at his left, Kaos in his center, the near-human Darth Hopel at his right, and his own squire, Eradicus, just beyond Hopel in the corner of his vision.
"I know you do not weep for her. This I know for true." He put his hands in the center of the table and looked down. "But Lady Cinder is my second, my right hand. I must have her returned to my side."
Darth Hopel scowled. "Forget your woman, Dark Lord." Across the table, Bestia twitched and her gaze went to the floor. "We must focus our efforts on rebuilding the order. This rabble—this ship—it will not do, Darth Ruin." He was a man of an age with Ruin, who bore its fissures with all the grace he could.
"I understand you believe her slaughtered by the Jedi." Ruin looked around the table once more. "Or worse still, captured by the Republic." He thrust his shoulders back and raised his head high, his beady orange eyes shining in the white light. "You are all wrong."
He was atop the table in an instant, slamming the toe of his boot into Kaos' face. The Quarren's chair went tumbling behind him, and Kaos fell atop it in a heap. Bestia thrust her chair backwards and cowered by the wall.
"You have doomed us all, you utter fool," said Hopel as he pushed himself to his feet. "I should have stayed on Yavin and told you and your whore to-"
Ruin's lightsaber came out the back of Hopel's throat, cutting him off mid-rant. He switched it off in a single motion, the blade retreating back into its gilded hilt. Hopel's corpse slumped forward against the table with a thunk, then hitting the floor when it fell off balance. Slobber pooled out of his hanging mouth into the singed hairs of his beard.
"My, my," Ruin said, jumping off the table. "Seems I got a bit ahead of myself." He inhaled and savored the chaos around him. "Now, where were we?"
Kaos pulled himself back up to the table with one hand. The other was cradling the swollen, bruised area around his eye socket. "Finding Lady Cinder, Dark Lord." He spat a phlegmy mix of spittle and green blood on the floor.
"And returning her to me! Alive!" Ruin's raised voice wasn't much higher in volume than his normal cadence.
"Certainly, Dark Lord," Kaos stammered. He rubbed his head before pushing himself up from the table. He stumbled bowlegged away from his chair. He stopped after getting halfway around the table. "Perhaps you might offer guidance to-"
"What do my words say?" Ruin's eyes laid him bare.
"'There is no knowledge. There is solely conviction.'"
Ruin pointed him towards the exit, and Kaos trudged sullen out the door.
"Now, Lady Bestia," Ruin said to the corpse of Darth Hopel. His eyes locked with the Hopel's dead ones.
"My lord?" He felt the fear dripping from her words.
"I give you little reason to fear me."
"You butchered Darth Hopel," she said, shooting glances between the corpse and her master.
"The only Darth here is me, Lady Bestia." Ruin's voice was distant and expressionless. "It would serve you well to remember that." He began to pace around the table in a circle, making short steps just to hear his footsteps echo across the floor.
"Do you understand the lesson I have taught here? You are but specks of dirt in my world. I am free to do with you as I wish. And if that means snuff you out like a dying star, then so be it." He circled his way back to her. "Do you understand why I have tasked Kaos and Kaos alone with locating Lady Cinder?"
He stopped next to Bestia and leaned in close. She was shivering at his approach. I give you no reason to shy from me. His thoughts oozed with contempt and disgust. She is no substitute after all.
"I send Kaos to his demise," he spat in a pale ear. "I send him to die—feebly—against Lady Cinder. Prove to me you have learned from my teachings. Why would I do this?"
Bestia took deep breaths. Her eyes darted everywhere: to smirking Ruin, to dead Hopel, to wide-smiled Eradicus, to the door, and back-and-forth again.
"He is weak," she said at last. "He does not retain the knowledge you give, he fails to learn from his mistakes and from his betters. His continued life is a disservice to our order, and a grave insult to you."
Ruin grinned. "And tell me, how did you draw this conclusion?"
"From you, Dark Lord."
"Go on." He resumed his pacing.
She recited his code:
There is no passion... there is solely obsession
There is no knowledge... there is solely conviction
There is no purpose... there is solely will
There is nothing... only me.
"Yes, Lady Bestia, those are my words." Ruin stood behind Eradicus, cupping his hands over the squire's shoulders. His blue fingers fell down upon the crystalline clasps holding the boy's cape in place. He let one jingle in his hand. "Prove to me you know what they mean."
"Kaos lacks ambition," she said. The faintest of smiles wormed across her black lips. "He would never go to the ends of the galaxy for us. Fervent as his belief in our cause may be, he will not die for you."
Ruin let out a hmm at that.
"He lacks conviction in our order, in us, and your judgment," Bestia continued. "He goes off to do what you tell him to do, without so much as a question." He felt her nerves beginning to loosen. "There is no willpower in him, no drive. He's just a sword to do with as you will."
Ruin felt her eyes upon him as he resumed his rounds. "Expand on that, Lady Bestia."
"He is a mere extension of your will be done. He will not even drink unless you lead him to the river."
Ruin stopped behind Bestia. He loomed over her once again, his hands pressing into the table in front of her.
"If he is so lacking," he said, craning down to her ear, "then how can he be expected to forge his own path?"
She swallowed and continued. She won't even look at me now.He would have liked to see her face. "He no doubt believes that 'only me' refers to you and you alone, Dark Lord."
He would be correct, though it makes him a useless pawn. Without want, there is nothing to be done with him.
"Good, you understand." Ruin clapped her on the shoulder. "Then you must also understand why I am not sending you to find the Lady Cinder."
Bestia's eyes turned to purple saucers. Unfortunately, you are stuck here with me, sweetling.
"You came to me young and restless," he continued, plopping himself into the center seat where Kaos had been, "having slaughtered countless nobles on your homeworld and plundering their riches. A well-honed knife seeking to sharpen her edge even more, to turn her purpose into obsession."
He leaned towards her, placing a clammy hand on hers, and smiled a crooked smile of yellowed teeth.
"And that brought you to me, like all those who crave to be part of something greater. Kaos has no drive, no will, no conviction. Hopel had naught but angst and worries. Did you hear how he scorned me? I had no choice but to run him through."
"I heard, Dark Lord," she said. She turned her eyes towards the floor.
"He claimed that I had betrayed us all," he said, ignoring her, "that I had sicced the Jedi upon us knowingly. That my purpose was to assemble all the Sith in one place so that we could be slaughtered by the Jedi and wiped out for good."
"A fool!" Eradicus said, laughing. "A fool, a fool!"
"Silence." The squire hushed but kept his buffoonish, crook-toothed grin. "I was not myself today, Lady Bestia. I fled the planet in haste, plagued by a horrendous, tenacious whispering noise bouncing in my mind.
"I left my damned Shadow Hand on the planet," he continued before she could finish opening her mouth. "My right hand. My second. Lady Cinder is the most valuable asset I have. I do not know which half of her is more fearsome: her martial prowess or her ceaseless curiosity."
He sighed deeply when he saw Bestia staring at him. "Say what you must say."
"Why did you broadcast our intentions through the holonet?"
"You will find out on the morrow when I address the crew," he said. Because he told me to. But he could not tell them the truth of it.
She shook her head. "Yes, Dark Lord. Our will be done." Bestia rose from her seat.
"Our will be done," Ruin and Eradicus said together, the latter with a chuckle.
Ruin motioned Bestia out with a wave of his hand. At last he turned to Eradicus, who now grew sober and silent with the last of the cadre gone. The two rose together and walked towards the door.
"I ill like this persona of the motley fool you have taken upon yourself, boy," Ruin said. He felt like he was scolding a child. In a way, he was; Eradicus had come to Ruin as a youth of twelve standard years and squired for him another six. It was difficult not to still see him as the child he had been rather than the man grown he had become.
"Forgive me, master," Eradicus said. He was a scrawny thing; he was midnight clad from neck to toe, his armor lobstered steel with a gaudy cape affixed to his back by two blue lightsaber crystals. He had claimed them from two Jedi padawans during a sojourn to Malastare. To call him homely was charitable. His head was bulbous and round, the front of his face flat save for the jowls that protruded like bubbles from his cheeks. Matted brown hair clung lifeless and oily to his scalp, wilted layers wisping down like thin fingers over his eyes. "But if I am to be surrounded by fools, then why shouldn't I play the part as well?"
Ruin remained distant. "Lady Bestia is no fool. And Kaos, a fool he may be, is far more powerful than you, whelp." He looked over his shoulder at Hopel's drooling corpse. "You were right about the former Lord Hopel." Thank you for bringing his liaisons with Lady Bestia to my attention, he might have said, but such gratitude would have given the whelp false hope.
"You think Bestia is not a fool?" Eradicus had grown bold since being elevated to squire. Ruin cared even less for it than he did the fool persona. "She plays the part of being the scared lady, terrified of your power, yet schemes against you when your back is turned. Did I not tell you-" The boy began to feel a tightening around his throat and began grabbing at his collar.
"You talk too much and think too little," Ruin said. He did not even a raise a finger or look at the boy. He took in the clattering sounds of Eradicus pawing at his gorget and permit himself a wry smile. "I fear that in your scheming to be a Lord proper, you might find yourself replaced instead of claiming a seat." Ruin ceased his concentration and heard the boy clang as he fell down to the floor.
Eradicus slumped to his knees and panted. "I understand, master," he said as he clattered back to his feet. Ruin kept his grin as he watched him stumble.
"You have my leave to continue to play the fool." 'Tis all you are and shall ever be.
He left Eradicus in the conference room as he headed back towards the bridge.
A gallant speech to rally the troops, Ruin thought as he ambled down the corridor. They must understand that I do not lead them to destruction. He felt a sudden pain as some foreign thought whispered to him from beyond the pale.
"Yes, they will know our purpose."