The fortress was before him, obsidian walls shimmering in the heat like a desert mirage. Arimanes lurched toward it, flinging himself through the black gates.
Within was a labyrinth. Twisted passages and hundreds of chambers, dead-ends, false doors, stairs leading nowhere.
He pressed onward, but soon he was utterly lost in the maze. Passing through a dozen nondescript, identical rooms, he slowed down, clutching his head, wondering if this was all a hallucination. If he had been driven insane just like the others, his mind twisted by terror, and now he was just stumbling blindly through an imaginary web.
At last he stopped to rest, breathing hard. The room he was in was like all the previous ones—empty and undecorated, save a row of black marble pillars against one wall. Every chamber so far had been densely populated by phantoms, most of them too immaterial to be seen. So instead the spirits assaulted his other senses, rousing memories that did not belong to him.
Shades of the dead were sliding on the walls and creeping through the halls. Arimanes shut his eyes, but he couldn’t block them out. They plucked at his sleeves and danced in circles around him, reeking of rot. He tasted the shed blood of a million species, liquid metals trickling down the back of his throat. Laughter here, a sob there, a moan and a groan and a scream…
Amid all this chaos, he heard his own voice say,
“See me. See me now.”
His eyes snapped open in surprise. Standing—er, hovering—in the archway before him was the unmistakable figure of the
real Nimdok, a history professor who had been killed in a transport accident three years ago. Arimanes had assumed his identity only recently, never dreaming he would encounter the man’s spirit. Then again, he never thought he’d take a trip to the Netherworld...
“Hello there, Master Heliobas,” the apparition greeted him coldly.
“Or should I say, Heliobas the Impostor?” He stopped directly in front of the living image that mirrored his own.
“Or perhaps just Arimanes Bosch. You may say that man is long dead, but I haven’t met his ghost yet.”
Arimanes gaped at the spirit, then shook his head.
“Whatever this is about,” he muttered.
“You couldn’t have picked a worse time. I’m on an urgent mission to retrieve a fragment of the Dagger of Mortis—”
“I know,” Nimdok interrupted. At Arimanes’ look of bewilderment, he added,
“That’s the trouble with being dead. You see and hear everything. Nothing escapes your notice.”
“Then… you know where the fragment is?” Arimanes took a step forward, then another. Though he was incorporeal and had nothing to fear, Nimdok instinctively shrank back. Arimanes smirked. He’d heard the professor was timid and cowardly.
“Yes, I know where it is,” the ghost replied, not quite looking him in the eye.
“But that’s not why I came here.”
When Nimdok failed to elaborate, apparently too stricken to speak, Arimanes sighed. He tried to guess the true reason for the ghost’s presence, and could think of only one logical answer.
“...you know who was responsible for what happened to Miri, and you want to tell me so that I can stop him.”
Nimdok’s expression was grim.
“I don’t have that information, unfortunately, but I do know that you can’t stop him. No one person can take him down.”
Arimanes snorted.
“I am more resourceful than you realize—”
“You’re not a Jedi Master. You’re just pretending to be one.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a growl.
“I don’t care what you do. But if the Sith get their hands on my daughter again, they won’t have a chance to kill you. I’ll hang you from a tree so high not even the buzzards will be able to reach you...”
Now it was Arimanes’ turn to recoil. Evidently the professor did have some backbone, at least where his kid was concerned. Though it flew in the face of all logic, Arimanes was afraid of this particular ghost.
“I’ll protect her,” he insisted, trembling slightly.
“I can at least manage that.”
“You won’t, because you can’t!” Nimdok roared.
“You can barely keep her alive. By the Force, you tried to bring her with you—here, right into the yawning jaws of hell! She’d have been swallowed whole, and you with her!”
Arimanes grimaced. The dead man was right. He hadn’t planned for this—hadn’t expected Miri would become his responsibility. There was a reason he had left her at the orphanage on Alderaan...
“Listen to me,” Nimdok said quietly, back to his usual self.
“I want to leave here with you. To be reunited with Miri.”
“That’s impossible,” Arimanes replied.
“You’re dead. You have no physical form. You couldn’t survive outside the Netherworld.” He froze.
“Unless… you mean you want me to kill—”
“Of course not!” Nimdok snapped.
“What kind of selfish monster do you think I am?”
“Then what else do you have in mind?”
“As I said,” Nimdok continued.
“I want to leave with you, if you’ll let me hitch a ride.”
For a few moments, Arimanes stared at the ghost uncomprehendingly. Then realization slowly dawned upon him.
His mind recalled passages in uncertain histories, legends of an Emperor with a soul so blackened by evil, he could cheat death. Years after he was overthrown he was still grasping at the throne he had once ruled the galaxy from, a wretched wraith lying in wait for a new host to be the seat of his power. Some sources said he cloned himself—an imperfect method of survival, for the copies all grew weak and frail with time. Others claimed he tried to possess the body of another being. A baby boy born to the daughter of the man who betrayed him, or his own granddaughter—either of them were slated to be the new vessels for his corrupted spirit. Both accounts said that his plans were foiled in the nick of time, but only because the threat had been taken seriously by the ones who put an end to the Emperor’s machinations.
“You want to possess me?” Arimanes whispered.
“...How? You’re not a Force User, let alone a powerful one—”
“Power is only necessary where you have to force it.” Nimdok chuckled at his own bizarre joke. Arimanes didn’t get it, so the dead professor went on,
“If you agree to it and don’t fight me, it will work.”
“What makes you think I’ll agree?” Arimanes shot back.
“I have my own unfinished affairs to deal with. Things a timid, spineless scholar like you couldn’t handle. I don’t need you coming in and taking over before my work is done.”
“I’m not asking you to give up your life for mine. In fact, I’m offering you greater opportunities.” Nimdok gestured the way he had come.
“I’ll lead you to the Dagger, or what’s left of it, anyway. And you’ll have access to all my knowledge…”
“There’s nothing you know that I don’t know.”
“Really?” Nimdok rolled his eyes.
“You made a complete career change after spending fifty years as a scientist. Regardless of how much flash-research you’ve done, you’re still just a bullshitter when it comes to this stuff. I at least know what I’m talking about.”
“Point taken,” Arimanes admitted.
“But neither of us knows what will happen if I let you possess me.”
“We won’t know until we try,” Nimdok replied cheerfully.
“After all, isn’t risk your business?”
Arimanes uttered a noncommittal grunt… but he saw no other choice in the matter.
“Just get me to the Dagger,” he said, beckoning to the phantom with one finger.
***
Meanwhile, in the filler episode…
Miri was hunched over, holding her downturned face with both hands. Someone had removed her helmet in order to wipe the tears and snot from her face, and now she was pouting, her eyes red from crying.
The green lady was sitting on a rock nearby, watching her. Daddy had left her here with the green lady. He said he would come back, but he’d been gone for a long time already...
Miri looked up as the green lady asked for her name.
“Miri,” she mumbled. Looking towards the portal, she asked,
“When is Daddy coming back? What’s he doing? Why can’t I go too?”
Gala Geert
Din Marren
The Hound Gedri Fehen
Leon Gallo
Loske Treicolt
Maynard Treicolt
Amea Virou
Allyson Locke
Vaulkhar
Credius Nargath
Ashin Cardé Varanin
The temperature gauges in his suit fall and spike again as he pushes through to the other side, feeling sand crunch beneath his boots as the tension of the portal finally snaps and releases its grip on him. As he takes several heavy steps into the field to make room for those coming in behind him, an alert flashes on his HUD advising him that multiple optical modes had stopped receiving any input. Din groans at the notice, but dismisses them. There were bound to be some technical complications when dealing with an alternate reality; best he could do was adapt and overcome. Taking a knee, he sweeps the seemingly infinite horizon with the barrel of his rifle as they wait for the rest of the team to emerge through the dimensional door and regroup.
