Back in the Game (COMPLETE)

9.13.4

When Maul came to, he didn't hear anything. He couldn't tell if it was because his hearing was damaged, if the debris on top of him was muffling sound, or if there just wasn't anything to hear. He groaned, but when he tried to move, the rubble trapped his body in the position it was in. He was going to have to shift the stone before he got out of this. 

It took a moment for his head to clear, but when it did, he reached out and lifted the stone off of himself, making sure not to shift anything that might collapse and trap him again. Slowly, without breaking his concentration, he pushed himself up and crawled out of the wreckage, only releasing his focus when he was clear of the debris. Collapsing on the ground, he took a moment to breath fresh air again and recover. He knew he had been lucky to survive the destruction of the temple.

Barriss.

He looked around frantically, not seeing her nearby, or anyone else for that matter. There wasn't a lightsaber lying around, or a corpse to bear witness to any death. No hint as to where his apprentice was. 

Maul pushed to his feet, hoping that somehow standing up would help him find her. "Barriss!! Barriss!!!" he called, searching around him for some movement, some sound that could lead him to her. He ran over to where he remembered throwing her before he had blacked out, but there was no track to follow from there either. With no other leads, he reached into the Force, searching around him for her, or perhaps a Jedi, or Tyrannus, anyone who might know where she was.

Instead, what he found was that he was alone, completely and utterly alone on Dromund Kaas. "No, no..." he muttered, but the farther he searched, the more emptiness he felt. His open hand curled into a fist, and his eyes flitted around, looking for a more acceptable answer to his search. 

There wasn't much else to see around him. Not only had the temple wall behind Maul been brought crashing down, but not much of the rest of the sacred place had been left standing either. The Togruta must have done it in her anger, or perhaps one of the other Jedi. They had come to destroy it, after all, hadn't they?

No bodies were laying in or around the remains of the temple, alive or dead. The fallen Jedi must have been taken by a survivor, or perhaps disposed of in some other inhumane way. "That would be the type of thing Tyrannus would do," Maul murmured to himself, "Leave no corpse to honor the dead with. Such dishonor for a Jedi would please him."

 He knew the other Mirialan was dead as well as Fisto, but the fate of Windu and the Torguta escaped him. They could be alive and on their way back to Coruscant with their fallen comrades, or dead and shoved out of an airlock, for all Maul knew. Not that he cared for them, but any hint as to what had happened might lead him to Barriss, and yet he had none.

"There has to be SOMETHING!!!" he screamed out into the silence, accidentally sending out a surge of power into the Force. The rubble nearby flew away from him, thundering as loud as the thoughts running through Maul's head. He clawed at his head, trying to think, trying to think, but sense escaped him. 

Maul shook his head, trying to think of what else he might be able to find here. Anything inside the temple was lost, although the thought of the sacred, ancient temple being violated with technology was enough to make him double over in sickness. There was nothing that could help him there.

"Yet Tyrannus would not occupy this place without assurance that he could leave it," Maul realized, trying to think of where the count might have hidden a ship. Slowly, he stumbled back towards the front of what had been the Sith temple, with no better place to start looking. One might have thought that his cybernetic legs were malfunctioning by the way he walked, but they were perfectly operational. It was Maul himself who was disoriented.

When he made it around to the front, he saw something he hadn't anticipated: his own ship in ruins. "No, no, no, no!!!" he wailed, tripping over his own feet to make it to the wreckage. It had been obliterated, utterly, and intentionally destroyed. He sank to his knees and picked up parts that had been severed, gathering them up in his arms as if hoarding them might make them useful again. His wild eyes looked around, looked for something that might still save him, but "There's nothing. NOTHING!!!!"

The pieces fell out of his hands, clattering on the ground and rolling away from him. Maul shuddered desperately, unable to believe the damage to his ship, but when he looked up and observed it closely, he saw "This was no accident. No, one of them did this. One of them...stranded me here to die, and suffer, suffer...suffer...

"But not the Jedi, no honorable Jedi would scrap a ship like this," he reasoned, standing and brushing his fingers over the saber cuts that were slashed into the wings. A Jedi would have taken him hostage, and brought him back to Coruscant to lock away. "Caged...like one of their animals, as they did TO HER!!!" His rage boiled over again, and he knocked away the scrapped ship, damaging it more than it already was. 

"No, no no no, I still need this," he reminded himself, racing over to stroke the hull of the ship. "The tracker, yes, the tracker will lead Saxon to me. When he finds I am missing, he will come looking for me. And then, I will come for you, my apprentice. I will find you, I will seek you out and not stop until you are safe with me."

Maul's hand came to rest on what was left of the landing gear, before remembering what Barriss had told him earlier. The Jedi ship had blocked his and Barriss's access to their ship when they tried to escape. So it should be here! "Where is it, where is it?" he asked, running over to the space between the entrance to the fallen temple and where his ship had been. He fell to his knees, for of course there was no ship there. "WHERE DID THE JEDI GO?!?!?" Clawing at the stone ground, he desperately tried to find a ship, buried in the stone perhaps, because "If the Jedi's ship is not here, then it must be gone! GOOOOOONE!!!!" he growled up into the sky, pulling his arms apart in a desperate attempt to part the stone. No such miracle ensued, though, and Maul was left to tremble in fear, scratching his own bloodshot eyes in agony.

"What did they do to you?" he asked Barriss, wishing more than anything to hear an answer. When his mind supplied possibilities, he froze, shivering at the horrors he saw in his mind. "Did they take you? Did they lock you up in the chains you finally broke free from? No, no no NO!!!!" He bowed to the ground, slamming his fist furiously into the stone. 

Then an idea, far worse than the ones before. "Tyrannus...he would take you. He would hold you and make you suffer in my place..." What torture could the hypocrite dream up? In what ways would he draw out Barriss's last days before she was no longer of use to him? "Sideous's pet has you, he has you and HE'S TAKEN YOU FROM ME!!!!!" He screamed and rose to his feet, sustaining his yell as he ran over to the broken stone and started punching it. "HE! TOOK! YOU!...HE! TOOK! YOU! HE! TOOK! YOU!"

His fist started bleeding, staining the stone and dripping down his fingers. Maul did not cease to abuse the rock or his hand, however, and continued to scream those three words over and over again. "HE! TOOK! YOU! HE! TOOK! YOU!"

For hours upon hours, his rage was beaten upon the rubble until his throat was raw and his voice was nothing more than a strangled breath. By the time his words failed him, his knuckles were stripped of skin, and significant damage had been done to the muscles there. When he could not punch the rock anymore, he slammed his horned head against it, knocking himself out almost immediately. He didn't have the strength to regain consciousness, not after a full rotation of no water and no food. This was how the Mandalorians found him, days later, and they wondered what monstrosity could have done this to their ruler. 

They took him aboard the ship and began healing him, treating his wounds and giving him supplements through an IV machine. On Mandalore, he was able to rest and finally wake up again, but the madness in his mind was more rabid than ever. He was satisfied with nothing and no one, and he all but abandoned his conquered people in favor of seeking out Tyrannus and more importantly, Barriss. His officials took it upon themselves to continue suppression of Mandalore, discerning that bothering Maul about anything other than a way to find his apprentice was suicide. Indeed, his yellow eyes looked wilder than ever, and anyone unfortunate enough to get too close to him during his fits soon found themselves sliced to death. 

So while they did try to control Mandalore, more so did Maul's forces put effort into finding Lady Offee. As far as they were concerned, she was the only thing that could save Mandalore's ruler. If no one found her soon, Maul might bring about Mandalore's destruction before the rebels did.