Ruin made the mistake of easing himself back in his seat. First he felt the linen of his robe snag. When he tried to move it free, a flash of pain went at first through his arm, then another shot through the side of little finger. A wetness welled up from his skin, bubbling through the sleeves of his tunic and melding with the burgundy of his robes. He wrenched free of the snag and brought his bloody hand in front of his face. He put his mouth to the wound and sucked until the warmth snaked down his throat and all he could taste were iron and salt.

After the officers had left, he demanded Radix build him a new throne.

"With what?" the boy asked, his tongue dripping with insolence just as Ruin's now dripped with blood.

Ruin gestured over to the pile of rubble. A thousand broken cobbles, heaps of frostbitten stone pocked by the elements, and the shattered bronzed fragments of an ancient bell that long ago gave themselves up to the wiles of verdigris. He turned and left the boy to his work. Hours passed and the blotted purple sky started to bleed blue again above the hordes of falling white when Radix' work was done.

But the throne was a jagged thing and loathsome to sit upon. The broken copper pieces jutted out, ruined blades poised to tear his flesh at any errant move. In a couple hours of sitting, the chair had awarded him with more scabs than all his battles in sixty standard years.

He brought his hand down from his mouth and let it sit in his lap. Radix was at the other end of the hall, standing by the doorway. His arms were crossed across his armored plate and his eyelids drooped heavy like the jowls he was not fleshy enough to have earned. Worse still, he was shivering.

"Does the cold trouble you. Darth Radix?" Ruin raised his voice just a hair. His throat was raw. The blood made it worse as it clung and hardened to the walls.

Radix blinked and raised his head. "Dark Lord?" He traded his shivers for that annoying shifting he did. He could never stay still and was always shifting his feet, crossing them over one another, raising them up. It was a habit of nervousness, and Radix was nothing if not a creature of habit. Neither quality befit a Sith Lord.

"You tremble," Ruin said.

"Tired, master." Radix walked over to Ruin, his dark armor rattling with every single step. It was enough drive any man mad. "We have not slept in days. How long must we wait for her?"

Ruin gave him a blank look. If he was tired, he certainly didn't feel it. His anger and frustration carried him thus far. What would be a little while longer? He exhaled sharply through his nose. "As long as it takes. I need you alert and ready for her."

"But master-"

"Do you wish to claim your rightful place by my side or not?" Ruin waved him away. The boy's jowls quivered as he sighed, and his shoulders slumped as he turned away. His woolen black cape billowed in the daybreak wind as he clattered back to his place by the door.

The lie served thus far, but he wondered for how much longer. He intended fully to welcome Cinder back to his fold, to restore her to her rightful office, and ensure she would hold it until he was too old and feeble to rule. And even if she had turned traitor, a whelp like Radix would do less than nothing to keep her from her goal. So long as Radix believed there to be a light at the end of his tunnel, he would serve until it killed him.

Though the boy did have a point. "Soon" had been several weeks ago, perhaps even a month or more. He found himself wondering if Cronos lied in some attempt to spur him to action. It worked in any case. Ruin never felt more like his old self, the self he thought long dead within days of arriving on Korriban with Cinder at his side and leading two score disillusioned Jedi at his back. Of course, back then, none of them knew they would fall. It was only when he and Cinder returned Darth Hopel and his tribe to the Sith homeworld that they finally understood.

He had Cinder and Hopel tend to most of his bidding after that, the former continuing where he left off and the latter putting his recruits to tests of knowledge and strength in a freshly rebuilt redoubt. Ruin himself never set foot in the academy, though not for lack of wanting. The first day he was to visit the apprentices, the voice came to him.

It was not the first time. That had been back on Coruscant, after a lengthy argument with fellow Jedi Master Sivu Horace. The two often sparred in their understanding of the Force, Ruin's solipsism against Horace's altruism. Horace had been the only one to speak in Ruin's defense before his exile at the hands of the Jedi High Council. He remembered the old master hanging his head in shame when Grandmaster Loras and High Consular Marvis passed down the sentence of exile. Ruin would have had all three of their heads had Loras not caught him off balance with a mind trick.

The trial came not without warning. It was Cronos who told him the councilors conspired against him. He slept that night, fomenting his rage and indulging in the bittersweet dream of hatred and scorn. He never knew before he was capable of such darkness. After he lashed out with his venom, he ascribed it to the voice's work. Now, he could afford it only so much credit. He had only wounded the council with words, though they were all too gleeful to let the rumors of violence spread within the temple. Phanius was more confused and betrayed; Ruin was only regretful he had not hacked the heads off the hydra before leaving Coruscant. The transformation had been complete before he even left. When Horace came to offer his apologies, Ruin made him flee at the point of a lightsaber. Its blade was a strawberry pink then, but the glow it gave off in the temple's dark hall that day reminded him all too much of the scarlet it wore now.

He was freed of his thoughts by a chill in the air that threatened to burst his scabs like blisters and cut him straight to the bone. He embraced the cold.

"You linger too much on the past." It was Cronos' voice, though Ruin could not tell from where it came. "What does any of it matter? She is come."

Golden wisps of wind followed slimy gilded tendrils that wormed from the sides of Ruin's throne. They wormed over to his feet with a howl that made the wind sound more like a wheeze, and built a man before him, radiant and golden as the thousand stars above and transparent as the stained glass that flanked his sides. Through Cronos' form, he saw Radix still standing by the door, his mouth slack and eyes gone wide in shock.

"Yet she is not here," Ruin said. He had been enamored with Cronos at first. The promise of power was so alluring. How pathetic it was that he succumbed to it so quickly. "What draws you forth from your tomb, old man?" He had taken his power, his flesh, then his dignity. One by one, Ruin clawed each of them back and reinvigorated his men with fear.

The apparition's face was always blank, but Ruin sensed a smile from beyond the wall of the void. "I am pleased with you Lord Ruin." Cronos' massive sleeves were crossed together, his hands clasped within, as he stepped closer to Ruin. "Perhaps you are the Dark Lord I seek."

"I would rather you make up your mind. Five thousand years should have made it simple."

"An impasse prevents me from making my decision." Cronos turned away and seemed to look toward Radix, though he might have just been looking out the door. Without seeing the man's eyes, it was difficult for Ruin to tell. "She and her whelp are powerful, Lord Ruin. You must be careful how you choose to proceed if you intend to win her back."

"I refuse to believe I am betrayed."

"Not betrayed. Supplanted. I have been beyond the wells of death, Lord Ruin." Cronos started walking towards the pews. Instead of trodding down the stairs, he continued straight, floating in the air. He opened his sleeves and raised his hands. Almost at once, snow began to pour through the sprawling hole in the roof and a thousand snowflakes buffeted his form. The wind picked up outside in a monstrous howl, and everything outside became solid white. "There are songbirds in the void with voices sharp as steel and thick as bile. Wretched creatures they are, but the songs they sing are soothing."

"Make your point," Ruin said, struggling to hear himself over the blizzard. He rubbed his hand against his temple.

"Mere birds to some, harbingers to others. They herald the coming of a new order." Cronos turned to face Ruin once again, standing above the empty square in the center of the pews. "An order for which you planted and sowed the seeds. Though I fear the Dark Lady will be the one to reap the harvest."

"No," Ruin said. First he raised his hand. He felt every finger twitch. He stood to his feet, feeling the sharp edges of his throne graze his robe. He cared little if it snagged and tore now. He curled his hand into a fist. "Words are wind. Prophecies are nonsense peddled by backwater peasants." It seems they exist even beyond this mortal coil, he thought. How pathetic.

"Perhaps." The wind seemed to laugh and the blizzard hardened. "Though more often than not, they tend to fulfill themselves. Be careful how you proceed, Lord Ruin, else even your rubble will be besoot by ash."

He felt something snap in him then. "No, you doddering old fool. Everything bows to me! This galaxy is mine!" His hand clenched tighter and tighter until his fingernails dug into the meat of his palm hard enough to draw blood. "There is nothing, only me!"

This time, the wind did laugh, and Cronos became one with it as he disappeared. The blizzard eased up and Ruin heard a choking sound in the distance. He set his arm back to his side and walked down the steps two at a time to the accompaniment of steel and cloth scraping stone. At the foot of the stair, Radix was before him on his back, breathing rapidly and hands at his side. Deep red worms eked from his throat where he had torn off his gorget and clawed at his flesh. Ruin sighed and lifted his boot. He savored the boy's look of terror a he brought down his heel upon one of the crystals that fastened his cloak. It screamed as it shattered, and a wayward shard caught Radix in the cheek. Ruin stepped on the other, then kicked the boy in the shoulder. He lifted him to his feet without a word, and Radix almost keeled over.

"My lord," he said, panting hard. He brought a hand to his throat and pawed at the blood. "You nearly killed me."

Ruin stared at him with empty eyes. And I will if you don't get out of my sight. "Go." He pointed at the door, out to the frigid wasteland beyond the citadel.

"Where?" Radix saw Ruin raise his hand again and instantly moved his hands to his throat. "Please no more."

"To her, you sniveling ingrate. Meet her when she comes so she can make an end of your miserable life." He had no more patience for the facade. "But before you go to welcome my Lady, fetch Corporal Orbus for me. I have need of her again."

Ruin turned away and started walking. He moved past his throne, underneath the stained glass windows and the holes in the roof, by the horrid scratches in the floor from where the pews had been so clumsily moved, all the way over to the flat slab altar at the other end of the citadel. In the distance he heard Radix shuffle out, coughing and gagging all the while. Pathetic.

He set his hand atop the altar. The polished stone was smooth to the touch and soothing against the heat in his fingertips. The reflection in the surface looked like him, though he wondered it was, truly. Sunken eyes and cheeks and the rigid outlines of bones stared back at him from the grey.

"So, Cronos," he said to no one, "is this the price of power?" He felt a hand on his shoulder, but when he looked at it, it was sheer and the color of space.

"The price of power is always death, for there are always those who covet. All that matters is what you accomplish before it comes."

Ruin chewed on that for a moment. "And I have accomplished naught."

"More than you think, Dark Lord." He shuddered as Cronos phased through him and appeared on the other side of the altar. "You are the catalyst. Even if you fall now, she will finish where you started."

"No."

"No?"

Ruin shook his head. "There can only be one of us in the galaxy, and I resolve to be that one."

The apparition shook its faceless head. "We shall see." Again, it faded away in yellow wisps.

Ruin heard a pitter-patter behind him. Two sets of footsteps made him turn his head. He made his way back to his slipshod throne to greet them.

"Corporal Orbus, my lord," said Radix. He kept his voice low, though Ruin heard traces of sniffling. He wanted nothing more than to throttle the boy right here and now. He wondered if Cinder would give Radix so quick a death, or if he even wanted to honor him with such dignity.

"Corporal." Ruin turned his attention to her and dismissed Radix with a wave of his hand. The annoying rattles of his armor echoed as he sulked out, but Ruin tuned them out much as he could. "I must apologize for summoning you again so soon."

She knelt at the steps before him. Get used to that. "Your needs are my only concern, Dark Lord." Her voice was dry and empty, devoid of any and all of the life and character it had before. "Captain Myrm will tend to the ships. I am here for you."

He had held her behind after the other officers left and drilled that line into her skull. She was resilient at first, but all flesh was feeble and all flesh eventually bent. All it cost was her mind.

Ruin stepped down the stairs and brushed her cheek. She did nothing besides stare at his boots with empty grey eyes. This will serve for now, he thought. He attempted a smile, but disappointment left it half-hearted. He was thankful she couldn't tell. "I wish for you to spend the night with me again."

"As you wish. Captain Myrm will tend to the ships. I am here for you."

Good. Let him, and let me tend to you.