There were twelve of them when Sieger Ren first gave the order. Malleus remembered that much through the broken memories and crackling static of his mind.
Twelve H’Drachi Seers taken from their sanctuaries forty years ago, bound in chains and carried into the Unknown Regions beneath the guns of the nascent First Order. It had been under the order of Aram at the time, the Supreme Commander dictating that he had wanted the future made obedient. He had wanted every rebellion strangled before it could draw breath, every betrayal uncovered before the traitor understood the thought forming within their own mind.
Malleus had delivered them to him and in turn to Sieger.
The years however had been long and now there were only five. They hung within the apparatus the Ssi-ruuk had constructed for them, suspended above a floor webbed with cables and drainage channels. Their long bodies had wasted beneath canvas restraints. Flesh once covered in fine fur had been shaved in patches to accommodate needles, electrodes and the cruel silver teeth driven against their skulls. Scattered tubes carried stimulants into their blood and drew other things back out.
Every few moments the machinery pulsed which would cause one of the Seers to convulse or one of the others to scream. It was barbaric in the very least, yet they all knew it was necessary for the good of the Order.
The sound travelled poorly through the chamber with walls thick and fashioned from ancient stone beneath layers of machinery, and the air was heavy with the heat of engines that had never been designed with mammalian comfort in mind. The scream seemed to strike the walls and die there.
Aram Kalast watched without expression. His white uniform remained immaculate despite the dampness of the chamber. His hands were clasped behind his back, posture straight, eyes moving from one suspended figure to the next with the detached consideration of a man inspecting damaged equipment.
Beside him, Malleus stood, appearing to be part of the darkness that spread from the corners of the room. Creeping shadows that carried too far.
The machinery pulsed again and this time all five reacted; a shudder passed through them in sequence, one body after another, as though something unseen had moved along the line and placed a hand upon each brow.
“There,” said the one that was known as the traitor. A single H’Drachi who stood apart from the others. Age had bowed him, but captivity had been kinder to him than it had been to his brethren. His fur was grey and carefully groomed, no needle marks broke his skin and no restraint held his wrists. If anything he was a simple creature, wearing a plain black robe and upon one finger sat a narrow band of dark metal; the first gift Sieger Ren had given him for his cooperation with Aram and the order. It had once represented protection, now as small as it was it resembled a collar of servitude.
Aram turned his head slightly towards the Traitor. “What did they see?”
The old H’Drachi hesitated, his eyes flashing to Aram as quick as Malleus moved. Like the flick of the eyes it was only one step, the scrape of armoured weight against stone, but the traitor recoiled as if a blade had been raised against him.
“They are divided,” he said quickly. “The currents multiply around the question. Every time we reach towards the place, the future separates.”
“We’re well past establishing that is what futures do,” Aram replied coldly.
“Not like this.”
The Supreme Commander approached the apparatus. Behind its clouded glass, symbols raced across Ssi-ruuvi displays, measuring pain as though it were merely another form of energy. Aram studied them for a moment before looking upon the nearest Seer.
Her eyes were open, thin trails of blood ran from both like red cast tears.
“The Jedi believe they have found something,” Aram said almost casually, as if speaking to a sibling across the table. “A place concealed from history. A weapon they believe capable of destroying the dark side.”
At the words, the chamber changed. A sudden and absolute certainty that something had become aware of them. The nearest Seer strained against her bindings. In a pained movement she twisted her head so that her ruined eyes fixed upon Aram, seeing neither the man nor the room around him.
“No,” she whispered.
The traitor looked towards her. His tongue wiping across his lips like a strange farmer showing off his stock, the H’Drachi took an uncomfortable step closer, a sickening excitement across his face. It was clear this was his chance to right the wrongs of a moment before
“Show us.” He whispered.
“No.” She growled back.
From behind them Malleus raised one gauntleted hand and the Ssi-ruuvi operator at the controls did not require further instruction. Talons moved across the console, drawing power from humming coils buried beneath the floor. The apparatus came alive with a deep electrical thrum before with a painful sudden moment the Seers screamed together in unison.
Their bodies pulled against their restraints, the sensation causing their backs to arch, their clawed hands opening and closing around empty air as they attempted to grasp something, anything to allow them to pause the pain. Blood darkened the metal beneath their heads as the machinery dragged their senses from the present and thrust them bodily into the time-stream that they had so willingly served before Aram had taken them.
The chamber disappeared from their broken eyes and instead they saw a world without a sun. In it’s darkness lay mountains that hid a door, a door protected by Jedi who were standing where no Jedi had stood for eons. Lightsabers were drawn pale against an immense and lightless interior, Stone turning slowly around them. Rings within rings, patterns within patterns each marked by hands long since reduced to dust.
They saw a woman standing before them, her posture proud and in defiance, then with a single moment they saw her burn.
The vision fractured a thousand times a thousand times, each substance pouring through the apparatus. In one, the stars all dimmed, the galaxy made to be no more then black darkness. Another where every temple and place of the force stood empty, full of dust of the lost generations that had unfolded in a single moment of fear.
Then it showed Malleus, and the dark soul that stood over him in all they did. Both were on their knees as something vast and unseen tore that darkness out of them by its roots. Then another, this time however they stood over the corpse of every living thing in the galaxy as conquering warlords.
Glass exploded across the chamber and sparks shot upwards as the machinery burst. One of the Seers, the one who had so defiantly denied him sagged within her restraints, smoke rising from her opened mouth. Another began laughing; a ragged, despairing sound that continued until a Ssi-ruuvi instrument tightened around her throat.
Aram did not flinch, he if anything just appeared indifferent at the display as Malleus slowly lowered his hand. The Traitor’s eyes moved from Aram and instead stared at his brethren upon their prisons of prophecy. Whatever colour remained in his face had drained from it.
“Well?” Aram asked finally through the silence.
“It is real.” Only the low hum of damaged machinery answered the creature, causing the old H'Drachi to swallow hard. “The place the Senator carried within his mind exists, but the Jedi have not found the weapon, but they have found the road leading to it.”
“Where?”
“I cannot see the world. The weapon obscures itself. There are absences around it, all I can see are places where events should exist, but do not. Entire futures have been severed.”
“Then follow what is missing.” Aram looked back towards the bleeding Seers, asking calmly.
The traitor’s expression tightened towards the white clad Imperial. “You do not understand.”
“I understand that you have mistaken difficulty for impossibility.” His eyes cast all the threat he needed. The H’Drachi cowered backwards slightly.
“It is not a weapon as the Jedi believe.” His words gave Aram pause even if only for a moment, a singular second that Malleus filled with him turning towards the traitor, and the shadows around his armour seemed to deepen.
The H’Drachi noticed.
“It cannot destroy the dark side as they are saying,” he continued. “The dark side is not a kingdom to be conquered. It is not an army that can be killed. It exists wherever fear is permitted to master the living.”
“So you believe Mr Praxon was wrong in what he was telling us?” Aram said with a level of amusement at the Traitor’s statement.
“The senator repeated what the Jedi believe.”
“And what do you believe?”
The traitor looked towards the Seer who had laughed. She was hanging limply now, her breathing reduced to wet and shallow pulls as the machinery released it’s vice grip from around her.
“I believe it destroys the door.”
Aram waited patiently, implying to continue.
“All living things touch the Force,” the H’Drachi said. “The weapon can close that connection. Perhaps it can do it across an entire world. Perhaps it can achieve it across many. Light and darkness together, burned from the living until nothing remains but silence.”
For the first time since entering the chamber, Aram looked directly at Malleus.
The Ren stood motionless.
Even with memories of being in their younger years It was impossible to know what lived beneath the helmet anymore. Was it rage? Fear? Or perhaps the one he once knew no long existed and now there was nothing at all remaining beneath the black armour. Yet the room clearly responded to him, around him and the others loose fragments of glass trembled across the floor. From the far contraption one of the surviving Seers whimpered as the darkness pressed closer.
“Enough Malleus.” Aram said sharply, the glass pausing its tapping, the room seemingly getting lighter as the Ren stood down. Aram’s attention returned to the traitor. “Can the Jedi activate it?”
The old Seer closed his eyes, his hand tracing symbols before him as he connected to the mythical time line his people held sacred, or had once held sacred before he had sold them out to the First Order.
For a moment he was once again among his flock, before Sieger Ren, before the chains and the needles, before the single act of cowardice that had purchased him forty additional years of life.
When he opened them, that illusion was gone.
“Yes.” The word left him as a confession more than a factual statement. It was almost as if he felt guilt towards the telling of the event. .
“And will they?” Aram removed his stare from the traitor, taking the remaining H’Drachi seers in their positions upon the machines of the Ssri-Ruuk.
“I have seen them try.”
“That was not my question.” His attention returned to the Traitor as the H’Drachi looked into the shifting currents of time. Into countless futures stained with fire, silence and the death of things that had no names.
“In every future where you reach it,” he said, “the Jedi try.”
Aram paused as he considered that. Was it what they wanted? For the Jedi to try? Then slowly he smiled. It was neither broad nor cruel. It was the small, courteous acknowledgement of a man who had indeed been handed precisely what he wanted.
They may not have been given a location. However in Aram’s calculation they had instead been gifted something far better and more valuable. The H’Drachi had offered him certainty.
“Continue the extractions.” He broke the silence.
The traitor’s composure finally broke. “Supreme Commander, another cycle will kill them. I cannot…”
“Then I suggest you find the location before they die or you will take their place.” Aram spat back with carefully aimed venom, the creature backing down almost immediately like a disobedient dog.
Aram turned his attention to Malleus, the two now standing face to face among the dripping of the alien architecture. He regarded the blackened armour of the Ren and for just a moment felt not only Malleus’ eyes upon him. It did not phase him, it could not, it would not.
“I need you to travel to where we are holding the Senator, there is a rescue attempt, you must be there and make sure it is successful. The girl is there, the one who you encountered on the ship. Find out who she is. Take Indra if you have to.” Aram stepped away and walked towards the chamber doors before adding almost as an after thought. “Try not to kill them all, Malleus. We need them alive.”
Malleus remained.
The surviving Seers felt his attention settle upon them, vast and suffocating. They had looked into the futures awaiting the creature beneath that armour. They had witnessed his death, his victory and his undoing. One by one, they closed their eyes as they attempted to seek solitude away from his empty gaze.
All except the woman nearest to him. Blood streaked the fur of her face. Her breath trembled, yet when she looked upon Malleus there was no fear left in her, only defiance.
“You have seen it,” he said. His voice was a break against the physical world, distorted and scattered by the mask he wore across his face.
“I have seen what it takes from you.” The Seer managed to hiss through a smile of bloodied teeth.
Malleus leaned closer. “Show me.”
Her smile widened as his gloved hand took hold of her head and gripped hard fingers into her scalp.
“No.”
There would be no screams this time. He didn’t need them.
