The lower levels were different in a way that felt practical, which sohow made them worse.
The corridors widened out, the doorways grew taller, and drainage channels ran along the floor at regular intervals. This part of the temple hadn't been built to impress visitors or intimidate apprentices. It had been built so people could move equipnt, bodies, and whatever horrible nonsense Sith alchemists considered a productive workday.
The air slled wrong.
Thousands of years of damp couldn't fully mask the chemical tang baked into the walls. Old preservatives. Old reagents. The kind of sll that made my sinuses itch and my brain whisper nope on repeat.
Arachnae's photoreceptor swept across the first laboratory space we entered, and she went completely silent.
I understood why.
The murals here weren't history. More like... Sith-thed technical docuntation. The kind you'd find in a dical textbook if dical textbooks were written by psychopaths.
Panel after panel showed procedures in clean, careful detail. Creatures were strapped to tables while alchemists stood around them with tools I couldn't identify and absolutely did not want near my organs.
Sithspawn creation, docunted with clinical precision.
Exotic beasts had been captured from across the galaxy, surgically altered, and infused with dark side energy until their bodies stopped resembling anything nature had signed off on. Extra limbs. Armored plating. Bioluminescent organs grafted onto bodies never designed to hold them.
Real "we were so preoccupied with whether we could, we didn't stop to think if we should" energy.
Arachnae beeped softly and pointed her manipulator at the next sequence.
Hybridization.
Different species forcibly combined through surgical apparatus I didn't want to understand. Cages were built into the depicted walls, each holding sothing that was partially one thing and partially another, with enough wrongness in the proportions to make my skin crawl.
I kept walking as the panels continued.
The next sequence was incubation.
Humanoid figures, mostly Twi'leks, humans, and a few others I couldn't imdiately identify, were chained to tables while visibly pregnant. Inside them, rendered through so alchemical imaging technique, were shapes that did not belong there. Monstrous silhouettes curled in wombs that were never ant to hold them.
The sequence ended with panels I refused to look at long enough to read.
"Arachnae, don't—"
Too late. She'd already rolled up to the most graphic panel in the sequence and was photographing it with enthusiastic recorder clicks.
BEEP beep beep beep!
"I said record the research docuntation for knowledge preservation, not the—who am I kidding. You're recording the freak show, aren't you."
BEEP.
"I knew it."
The laboratory itself was a graveyard of ancient tech. Shattered specin tanks littered the floor, with the glass degraded to powder and the tal fras warped by corrosion. Surgical tools had turned into rust sculptures on cracked stone counters. Holding cells lined the walls, each one fitted with dead force field generators and doors that had corroded open centuries ago.
Inside those cells were skeletons.
Lots of skeletons.
So still wore the remains of restraints around their wrists and ankles. Adults, mostly. Humanoid. Probably the "host mothers" from the murals, because apparently the Sith saw a moral event horizon and decided it needed a basent.
Others were smaller.
Way smaller.
Child-sized bones lay scattered in the corners of cells, half-buried in dust and debris. So looked like they had never made it past infancy.
I stared at one cell where tiny skeletal remains were curled against the wall.
My stomach turned.
Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and add "burn this entire temple to the ground" to my to-do list.
Arachnae beeped quietly beside .
"Yeah," I muttered. "I see them."
I moved past the cells before I could think too hard about what happened here. My brain didn't need that trauma on top of everything else.
Near what might have been a desk, sothing caught my attention.
A small device sat half-buried under dust and fragnts of broken slate. Holocron-shaped, sort of. The geotry wasn't quite right, but dark side energy radiated from it in a slow, pulsing rhythm.
Jackpot? Or trap.
"Oh hell yes," I muttered. "Please don't be a trapped Dark Lord."
I approached carefully.
Could be useful. Could also be a trap designed to explode my brain.
Fifty-fifty odds, really.
I reached out with the Force, just a light touch, and the holocron flared to life.
A distorted voice crackled from the device.
"—Log entry, day two hundred and fourteen. The seventh generation continues to exceed expectations. By allowing the viable offspring to mate with their humanoid hosts repeatedly, we've achieved a thirty percent increase in cognitive function. Intelligence trics are improving with each cycle—"
What the fuck.
"—Sophros specins remain the most promising base stock. Their natural resistance to the Force makes them ideal for crossbreeding programs. We've successfully created hybrids capable of basic tool use and rudintary communication—"
The voice continued, clinical and detached, describing generational breeding programs like soone discussing crop rotation.
"—maternal mortality remains high, but replacents are easily acquired. The specins show no attachnt to their offspring, which simplifies containnt—"
The holocron flickered.
Static washed over the recording, and the voice warped into sothing unintelligible before the device gave one final pulse and died completely.
A crack split down the center of the casing, and the whole thing crumbled into dust in front of .
I stared at the pile of ash on the desk.
"Holy Christ, what the fuck?"
Arachnae beeped nervously.
"Yeah, no, I... yeah. That's... that's enough research for today."
Sophros.
The word stuck in my head like a splinter. I'd heard it before. Sowhere. Deep in the filing cabinet of childhood SWTOR mories.
But the connection wouldn't form.
Like rembering a song title from three notes.
Probably so side quest I skipped for the XP grind.
Knowing my luck, it's gonna be important.
Arachnae's photoreceptor shifted toward the far side of the laboratory, where a section of the wall had mostly survived the collapse.
At first I thought it was another procedure mural.
Then her light climbed higher, and I realized this one was different.
The mural covered nearly the entire far wall, though the center had been shattered by falling stone. Most of the main figure was gone, crushed under cracks and missing chunks of masonry. All that remained were the edges of sothing massive, the suggestion of too-long limbs near the broken sections, and dozens of chains leading inward toward the destroyed center.
Sith alchemists surrounded the missing figure, rendered small by comparison. So were kneeling. So had their arms raised. A few looked like they were trying to run, which was not the most reassuring artistic choice.
The chains ran from the shattered center of the mural to pillars carved with binding runes. Dead figures in Jedi robes lay scattered at the base, and thin carved lines ran from their bodies toward the missing creature, like sothing had been drawn out of them.
Arachnae beeped quietly, her photoreceptor aid up at it.
"Yeah," I said. "I see it."
The inscriptions around the mural were damaged, but fragnts survived.
"Specin from Soph—"
"Binding protocols—[missing]"
"Failure of—[missing]—containnt"
"Do not—[missing]—beneath the—"
The Sophros reference. Again.
I stared at the broken center of the mural, where all those chains led into empty, ruined stone.
Whatever had been important enough to paint there, ti had taken most of it.
Or soone had destroyed it on purpose.
"Alright," I said. "Record what you haven't already and let's move. This room is giving the creeps."
Beep.
"Yeah, I know you like it. That's the concerning part."
___
I started walking back toward the corridor, my mind tossing the options around.
Should I even bother going deeper?
Honestly, the deeper I went, the more this place felt like a dead end. A literal tomb. Everything of actual value had either been looted by the Republic, reclaid by the Sith, or rotted into useless powder over the last three thousand years.
My grand hope of finding so ancient, fully functional ship sitting in a subterranean hangar was starting to look incredibly naive.
Real life wasn't a video ga. There was no pristine, hidden legendary mount waiting for at the bottom of the dungeon.
If I wanted to get off this rock, my best bet was still the Scythe.
Even with a fried nav-computer, it was still a modern starship. Trying to patch that up made a thousand tis more sense than praying so Old Republic relic still had working sublight engines and a fuel tank that hadn't turned into archaeological sludge.
Then there was the calling.
That weird, magnetic pull I'd been feeling in my gut since we crashed had gone quiet.
Completely quiet.
Like soone had flipped a switch and cut the signal. Which made no sense unless Vitiate had been the one fabricating the sensation all along just to lure down here.
Speaking of the old bastard.
I kept my ntal shields locked down, expecting so kind of psychic ambush at any second. My head throbbed from the effort of holding the block in place, but the corridor stayed silent.
No whispering ghosts.
No creepy temperature drop.
No invisible hand trying to peel my skull open.
Did I actually manage to damage him that badly?
I doubted it. You don't survive three thousand years as a cosmic horror parasite by getting permanently put down because a kid scratched your spiritual furniture.
He was probably waiting. Watching. Let the kid wear himself out. Let the swamp do the work.
A cool draft brushed across my face.
I stopped.
The air was damp, and it was moving.
Wind.
Inside an underground ruin.
"No way," I whispered.
Arachnae let out a sharp, questioning beep.
"There's an opening," I said, turning toward the draft. "A real one. Leading outside."
I didn't waste another second.
I scooped Arachnae up under my arm, winced when one of her tal legs scraped my ribs, and started running toward the source of the airflow.
The corridor narrowed quickly, forcing through a series of collapsed gaps in the masonry. I squeezed sideways through one break, ducked under another, then had to crawl on my stomach through a gap barely wide enough for my shoulders.
Arachnae complained the entire ti.
Beep boop BEEP beep beep.
"Quit bitching," I grunted, dragging her behind by one manipulator arm. "We're almost there."
For once, being trapped in a twelve-year-old's body was actually useful. An adult would have gotten wedged between the stone slabs and died in the stupidest possible way.
The air kept changing as we moved.
Cold. Wet. Charged with ozone and rain.
I scrambled over a pile of loose rubble and stepped into a massive hall.
The space opened around , wide and circular, with the far walls swallowed by shadow. Rain poured through a huge break in the ceiling, drumming against the stone floor and spreading into a shallow pool across the center of the chamber.
I looked up.
The ceiling had caved in completely above us, leaving a jagged opening to the stormy sky of Dromund Kaas. Heavy rain fell through in sheets, cold and relentless, and for a second I just stood there staring at it.
A way out.
An actual way out.
Then I judged the distance and imdiately hated reality again.
The opening was at least thirty ters up. The walls were slick with rain, black moss, and centuries of organic sli. Climbing that without a grappling hook, jetpack, or functioning sense of self-preservation was going to be miserable.
"Alright, so we have a chimney," I muttered, setting Arachnae down. "But no ladder."
Arachnae shook herself off, spraying water from her chassis, then swept her headlamp across the chamber.
The beam passed over a raised stone platform in the center of the hall.
I walked toward it, boots splashing through the rainwater.
Huge iron rings were bolted into the stone. Heavy chains lay shattered across the platform and the surrounding floor, each link thicker than my leg. Rust and mineral deposits had fused so of them to the stone, turning the whole thing into one ugly fossil of bad decisions.
I stared at the chains for a long mont.
Then I looked at the platform.
The ring pattern. The central placent. The way the chains had once spread outward from the middle toward anchoring points around the hall.
"Wait..."
Arachnae beeped quietly beside .
I turned slowly, looking from one chain to the next.
"Doesn't this look like what we saw earlier?"
Her photoreceptor angled toward the broken chains, then back to .
"The mural in the lab," I said. "The one with the missing center. All those chains leading inward."
Boop... beep.
"Yeah. That's what I'm thinking."
This wasn't just so random holding area.
This was the actual binding site.
Whatever the Sith had painted in that broken mural had been chained here.
I stepped closer to the platform, keeping Hett's lightsaber raised. The crimson glow slid over the wet stone and caught on deep gouges carved into the floor.
Scratch marks.
Huge ones.
Each groove was wide enough to fit my hand inside, and they ran in long, ragged lines from the center of the platform toward the exits. So crossed over each other. So dragged up the base of nearby pillars before fading into darkness.
Whatever made them had spent a long ti trying to get loose.
I let out a slow breath and glanced at the broken chains.
"Absolute nightmare of a bio-weapon," I murmured.
If the ancient Sith had gone to the trouble of forging chains this thick, they weren't taking chances. This thing must have been a walking ecological disaster with claws.
"Well, thank the stars I'm thousands of years too late to get introduced," I muttered to Arachnae. "Whatever was in those chains is long gone. Probably died of starvation or rotted into dust before the Republic even had a capital."
Still, the word from the holocron crawled back into my head.
Specins from Sophros. I looked down at the gouges again.
For so reason, my mind felt unusually curious about this thing. It felt like a itch to be scratched. The psychotric echoes on those marks felt very attractive.
Normally, touching anything in this temple was a fast track to a ntal breakdown, but these were only scratch marks in stone.
It was a calculated risk.
Which was the fancy way of saying I was about to do sothing stupid and wanted it to sound tactical.
I knelt beside the nearest gouge, keeping the lightsaber raised so the red glow filled the groove.
"Just a quick peek," I told Arachnae.
She turned her headlamp toward the upper gallery instead of answering, scanning the dark spaces above us.
Very reassuring.
I pulled off my glove and pressed my bare palm against the damp stone.
Carefully, I let my mind slip into the shallow edge of psychotry.
I expected the usual residue. Fear. Anger. Pain. The scrape of claws. The strain of chains. So distorted impression of whatever had been trapped here.
Instead, I felt nothing.
I frowned and pressed my palm harder against the stone.
There was no trace at all.
Stone held mories well, especially inside a dark side nexus this strong. Even a mundane animal scratching a wall three thousand years ago should have left sothing behind.
I pulled my hand back.
What the hell...?
The answer ca as the temple went silent around .
The dark side static vanished first.
Everything disappeared at once.
The Force, that constant background ocean I'd spent the last two years learning to navigate, was suddenly gone. I couldn't feel the rain, the stone, the moss, Arachnae, or even the faint hum of life in my own skin.
A cold, wet breath brushed the side of my face.
A low clicking sound vibrated through the damp air, close enough that I felt it against my ear.
I spun, bringing the lightsaber up in a frantic defensive arc.
The crimson blade lit up the thing behind .
A massive, hairless head hovered inches from my face, purple-grey skin stretched tight over a skull that looked too long to belong to anything sane. Two milky, useless eyes sat deep in its face, and beneath them, the mouth split open around a thick mass of black tendrils.
The tentacles twitched toward , wet with dark sli that slled like rotten at and old copper.
[To Be Continued]
A/N: ehehe, i fell asleep and forgot to update on ti....
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