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Thrawn had never experienced such violent summer rain. His upbringing had been cold—snow and empty blue skies, silver breath and ice steppes. Balance and awareness was paramount to avoid slipping. The red sun of his homeworld was like a dying candle, soft, only thinly warm.
Summer rain muted the world, clouds red as they masked the twilight sun. It gave the strange impression of flames in water. There was a small encampment not far away. As Thrawn understood, this was a Black Suns village, something built with the expectation of impermanence. The Shadow Collective had survived through their willingness to adapt, to change, to disappear. Even finding this much had required a wealth of resources, and Thrawn was doubtful that it was worth the bother. But he had already put in this much.
It was worth seeing it through.
Thrawn liked to think he lacked ego—or rather, imperial ego. His compatriots were proud, neurotic, undisciplined. Their goals were self-serving—thus, short-sighted. The Inquisitors were a useful resource, perhaps, but Thrawn once wondered if all Force-sensitives were better disposed of. Their uses were varied, and many of them could be persuaded to lend their talents—willingly or not.
Maul was one such resource. He had disappeared for many years, vanishing and then reappearing just as suddenly. Intel had indicated his renewed ownership of the Shadow Collective. He was amassing power.
Yet…
Yet it would be... improbable for Maul to regain the power he once possessed.
Thrawn had something to offer, a sentimental artifact that he suspected Maul would enjoy. He could barter. It seemed… sensible, but the rain made his logic feel hazy. His waterproof overcoat did little to shield him, when the air itself was so humid. The hot stone steamed beneath his boots.
He passed the threshold. No one stopped him. The hazy shapes of the syndicate members moved across his peripheral vision, seemingly minding their own business. But he felt their gazes upon him, and he knew that he was being permitted to occupy this space. It would be foolish to be complacent.
It was a risk, but Thrawn was a man of numbers. He was confident that the numbers favored him now. From what he knew of Maul—and he had done his research, certainly—the man was emotional to the point of irrationality. He would be too curious to destroy a potential threat, too eager to leverage any authority he could—even to his own detriment.
The structure that revealed itself in the haze of the storm was squat, unimpressive durasteel. It was flimsy old tech with no consideration for aesthetics or comfort. This building had been constructed and deconstructed many times. In the war, these structures had been used for outposts—sturdy enough to survive a shelling, but easy enough to take apart when it was time to move.
It was at the door that Thrawn finally met resistance.
A Trandoshan guard intercepted his path, rifle crossed over an enormous scaly chest. In the wet heat of summer, the Trandoshan was dressed sparsely, feathers and leather straps holding detonators and knives. There were marks painted on his scales, black stripes and other such things. Not even the rain blurred them. Thrawn wondered at their meaning.
“Take off your hood,” the Trandoshan hissed.
The demand surprised Thrawn. But he recovered smoothly, pushing his hood back and allowing it to fall against his shoulders, wet and heavy.
The Trandoshan peered down at him. After a moment, he stepped wordlessly aside.
Odd. Concerning.
“Last door on the left,” the Trandoshan said.
Thrawn walked through the door. The air was stale and hot, the corridor narrow, claustrophobic. Lamps flickered from the ceiling, uttering a low, insectoid hum. Everything stank of sweat and mud.
Thrawn missed the cold, antiseptic tastelessness of recycled air. This heat was putting him in an odd, melancholic mood. The sense of disorder was unsettling him. Unfamiliar.
He found the door. When he pressed the switch, it opened with a slow, rusty whine.
Maul was there. Thrawn was quietly surprised that he had been permitted an audience so easily. Finding him at all had taken resources untold, made all the more challenging by the necessity of secrecy. No one knew Thrawn was here.
Maul stood in the middle of the room, shirtless, skin damp. He had clearly been doing some kind of kata. A wooden staff was clasped in his hands, the kind that Thrawn recognized from statues and paintings he’d salvaged from sacked Jedi temples.
He was disappointed when Maul turned away to place the staff on the far table.
Maul was muscular, but there was a wiry quality to his body—ribs protruding, tendons bulging, spine ridged. He was returning from a state of emaciation.
“I suppose I need not introduce myself,” said Thrawn. “I am expected, aren’t I?”
He stepped into the bare room. There wasn’t much here, just a mat on the floor for training and meditation. Thrawn could see old blood stains upon the weave.
“I foresaw your arrival,” said Maul.
Maul’s words might have been cryptic if he hadn’t broken off into a soft, indulgent chuckle. His voice was a hair away from unhinged.
If the years of supposed isolation had caused the zabrak’s mind to unravel, Thrawn wouldn’t be surprised. Yet, Maul had managed to amass his old power base. He was not to be underestimated.
“And told your guards to permit me to come,” said Thrawn. “You know my reason for coming here?”
“For certain? It would reassure you if I did.” Maul smiled. “I doubt you came here for an alliance with the syndicates.”
“No,” said Thrawn. “Our goals are diametrically opposed. I am here for you, not the collective.”
“Hm.”
Maul lowered himself onto the mat, his metal legs folded beneath him. Thrawn followed suit; it felt correct to mirror Maul, to find confluence. The floor was slick with condensation and mud. Thrawn knew his already soaking clothes would be stained when he left.
It was fine. Thrawn was exacting about his appearance, but not precious.
“So,” said Maul. “You’ve come for my powers, then.”
“Yes.” Thrawn inclined his head. “Your intuition.”
Maul smiled. “My witchcraft.”
Thrawn knew Maul was trying to get a rise out of him, or at least unsettle him. This expression of the Force was strange, unintuitive to the scientifically minded. Reducing it to the supernatural was a ploy to embarrass and frustrate Thrawn, to offend his sensibilities—nothing more.
“Witchcraft,” Thrawn agreed, soft and unbothered. “A skill inherited from the Nightsisters of Dathomir, I presume?”
Maul’s eyes narrowed. The tip of his tongue rolled over his canines; a predatory, angry tic. But his expression smoothed. “A power you’ll be well familiar with, in time.”
“Intriguing,” said Thrawn.
“What do you hope to gain from this encounter, I wonder?” asked Maul, his voice feline, playful. “It seems to me that a more confident man would trust that he had control over the outcome. Do you not?”
Again, another ploy to imbalance him. Thrawn didn’t take the bait.
“A confident man may be wrong,” said Thrawn. “A cautious man will always fare better when the tides turn.”
Maul tipped his head. He has a strangeness to him, a kind of animal body language that Thrawn found uncanny. He fit seamlessly into this place; the mud, the rain, the constant flux of the organic, the wild. Thrawn knew it was not his world, nor was it a world he could entirely comprehend.
“The tides will turn,” said Maul. “And you will be caught in the storm, too. No doubt of that, I’m afraid. But why should I tell you that? What utility would that have, I wonder? To know what cannot be changed is a worthless insight.”
“Knowing may change the experience of the event,” said Thrawn, voice soft, gaze unwavering. “And so I wish to know.”
“Give me the offering you brought,” Maul said, “and I’ll consider it.”
Thrawn reached into his overcoat and withdrew an object wrapped in silk. He laid it before Maul; an offering. He assumed that Maul would know what it was before he uncovered it, but it didn’t quite seem to be the case. There was a complex array of emotions in Maul’s eyes, and Thrawn understood none of them.
Maul lifted the darksaber hilt. He turned it over in his palms. There was fondness there. Thrawn noticed the subtle reluctance when he set it back down, the slight wringing of his hands, the way his fingers opened and closed; old memories. His yellow eyes fixed upon Thrawn again. His good humor had evaporated, yet he didn’t appear to be angry. Just… cold.
Thrawn said nothing. He waited.
“Do you know what will happen to this planet, one day?” asked Maul.
An intriguing question. There were many interesting things upon this planet, but Thrawn intuited that Maul was thinking on a grander scale. So he first contemplated the sun. It wasn’t particularly large, neither young nor old. It would not be massive enough to become a black hole, nor a neutron star.
“A planetary nebula,” said Thrawn.
It was a guess. Wrong or not, Maul seemed pleased that he was thinking in such grandiose terms. His chest expanded as he breathed, deep and slow. His yellow eyes grew clearer, but his gaze was distant. Whatever drew his attention now, it wasn’t here.
“Yes,” said Maul. “And I suppose you can guess what will be left of your Empire at the time that occurs?”
Thrawn was unmoved. “I do not operate on such a scale,” he said. “Spare me your musings about the nature of entropy. I have considered them before.”
Maul’s eyes refocused on him. His lips twisted. “Have you.”
“I have,” said Thrawn. “I find such thoughts droll. One cannot imagine billions of years—cannot conceptualize the grand space of time between now and the end of a star’s life cycle. But we can conceive of generations. We can imagine legacy. No such thing is eternal, but legacy has a greater lifespan than we do.”
Maul was unamused. His eyes narrowed, sharp teeth peeking behind his lips for a moment.
“Alright,” he answered, collecting himself. “Then let’s shorten the scale, shall we? A child born today—now, perhaps, this very night. Imagine her drawing her first gasp in this universe, screaming her discontent with it before even opening her eyes. Can you imagine her scale?”
“I can.”
“And if I told you she will only have the haziest memories of the Empire…?”
Thrawn felt a vague stab of unease. He hid it admirably well. “I would not believe you.”
At this, Maul’s body language became somehow animated, though he barely moved. There was brightness in his eyes, cruel but joyous.
“Why come here,” Maul asked, “if you’re going to dismiss what I say?”
“Because my own projections differ from yours,” said Thrawn. There was no irony in his voice; no doubt. He had never been wrong about something so important. “The Empire will not fail while I am here.”
“And then you must assume you will not be here,” said Maul.
Thrawn often was placed in great danger, and took many risks. Maul could kill him now, surely, although Thrawn did not sense that intention in him. Thrawn had taken such things into account before he opted to come here.
“So I am dead, in your vision of the future?” asked Thrawn.
“Not dead,” said Maul. There was a smiling theatricality in his tone. “Simply gone. Removed. Absent.”
“Not voluntarily.”
Maul shrugged. “I can only tell you what I see—or do not see. And you are not here when the Empire falls. If you have no intention to leave on purpose, then I suppose yes. Not a willing absence.”
But still not death. Thrawn tried to imagine how such a situation may arise. Would he go back to his own people for some reason, eschew the Empire entirely? He was not convinced there were many reasons for him to do that now. He certainly did not have personal ties more important than his ambitions.
Maul watched him closely. Thrawn could feel the scrutiny. He did not think that Maul could clearly read his thoughts, however—no Force user yet had been able to. There was something about the Chiss that made them opaque, gave them natural shielding against a threat they never knew they had.
“You don’t believe me,” said Maul.
Maul was correct. Thrawn didn’t find it possible to believe him. As he turned his mind to the structure of his life—past, present, future—he found no space for an unexplained absence. He would have been more convinced had Maul simply told him he would die.
“Many fortune tellers are able to concoct persuasive stories,” said Thrawn. “Vague stories. I can tell you that I foresee the Empire creating a power base greater than any other. My calculations, my experiences, my intimate understanding of the structure necessarily demonstrate success, even in my absence.”
Maul laughed; a grinding, bitter noise. He held up the darksaber suddenly, pointing it at the center of Thrawn’s chest. He held it steady, humor evaporating in a single breath.
“If I’m right about what I’ve foreseen,” said Maul, “then I can’t possibly kill you.”
Thrawn did not move. His posture remained calm. His breaths were even.
“And you will demonstrate this through a test?” Thrawn cocked his head thoughtfully. “What benefit is this test to me? If I’m correct, then I die.”
Maul smiled. “Your lack of faith is a personal slight.”
Thrawn doubted he would ever truly understand Force-sensitives. There was a deep unpredictability in behavior that Thrawn found deeply unpleasant. Maul may well have been the best example of this; he seemed to relish in his own chaos, soaking in the muddy, foggy atmosphere of the rainstorm while Thrawn grew ever more uncomfortable.
“You’re serious,” Thrawn said.
Maul flicked off the safety notch over the button. He pressed it.
Nothing happened.
Maul raised his brows, a look of almost feline satisfaction crossing his face. He looked down at the darksaber hilt resting in his palm, then back at Thrawn. “You disabled it.”
“I thought it prudent to do so,” Thrawn admitted.
It was a simple fix. The circuit was merely broken between the switch and the crystal, and could be reengaged with a quick solder. But Thrawn did not feel inclined to tell Maul that.
“You had nothing to lose by checking, incidentally,” Thrawn added. “So I am still not inclined to believe you at face value.”
It was Maul’s complete lack of interest in Thrawn’s doubt that seemed the most persuasive. He merely shrugged, clipped the darksaber onto his belt, and smiled. There was no trace of a lie in his body language. While Thrawn was not convinced, it seemed that Maul was. It was more disquieting than Thrawn would have preferred, to know that Maul saw a straight line, a single path, and the purpose was only to walk it to its conclusion.
Perhaps that was true for one so tied to the Force. But Thrawn refused to believe that the universe was arranged in such a manner. Failure and victory were not the result of predestination. Strange, strange that their views were so opposite, when Maul relished in chaos and Thrawn sought order above all else.
But perhaps that was not so unlikely. Maul bit and clawed against the fate that suffocated him. And Thrawn, believing that chaos was the truest yet most odious state of the universe, sought to create order.
“If I prove to be right in the end,” said Maul, “then you’ll have to reconsider your, hm, personal distaste for prophecy and magick. You are… not a hopeless case, of course. You came to me for answers. No doubt it will affect what comes next for you.”
“In your mind, this meeting is for a purpose,” said Thrawn. “It will change your vision of the future that we spoke of now. Am I wrong?”
At this, Maul shrugged and climbed to his feet, turning away from Thrawn to look out at the rainstorm. Thrawn followed suit, standing quietly, waiting for some conclusion, some… meaning. But Maul remained silent. He offered no answer to the most vital question between them:
Was the future set in stone, or was it not?
When the silence was finally broken, it only offered more mystery, more ambiguity.
“For Dathomir,” said Maul. His voice was soft; little more than a sigh.
“I don’t understand,” said Thrawn.
Another shrug, a flash of bright, angry teeth over a mud-streaked shoulder.
“You will,” said Maul. “But then again—perhaps not.”
The storm was worsening when Thrawn left. The wind has been stale before, but now it moved, rolling in oceanic tides across the flooding landscape.
Thrawn felt a strange inkling of purpose in Maul’s words, knowing that they were not incidental. Maul wished to plant a seed in his mind.
For Dathomir.
Thrawn knew little of that strange planet, apart from the power and strangeness of the natives that once resided there. They were long dead now. The Empire had deemed them too dangerous to be left alive.
Perhaps Maul meant to divert fate. Perhaps he meant to guide Thrawn to that new destiny. Perhaps it was a portent of death.
(Or perhaps it was nothing at all.)
In the distance, there was a rumble of thunder. Thrawn felt it more than he heard it, like ripples at the edge of a pond. It was sweeping towards him at ferocious speed. An inevitable force, heat and friction and the laws of nature coalescing into violent calamity.
For a moment, Thrawn was struck with a sickening feeling, a dread that he rarely indulged. But his mind drifted necessarily back to Coruscant, to the weather satellites there. There were no storms on Coruscant. Skies were temperate, clear, predictable. Mandated.
A place where order reigned. Knowable. Conquerable.
He left that place without intention to return. Yet, in the days and weeks after, he dreamed of that camp of heat and mud and prophecy. And each time, he woke with wistfulness and dread heavy in his stomach.