The Molten Ones

Posted on Fri Oct 24th, 2025 @ 8:24pm by Reave & Bomoor Thort & Mentis

2,038 words; about a 10 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Cloud City, Bespin
Timeline: Week Two (After 'Rusted Veins')

OLD

Thane looked down into the glowing throat of the machinery below, the first sound of distant grinding and faint, rhythmic hammering drifting upward to them. “Whatever they’re building or worshipping lies beneath us,” he murmured.

"They will soon learn their faith is woefully misguided," his apprentice quietly remarked in a low icy tone, her hand close to her lightsaber hilt.

NEW

Keeping pace with the surprisingly quick little legs of their Jawa companion, Mentis and Bomoor climbed a short flight of steps and emerged through an archway into another open section of the city. In contrast to the small landing platform, this area extended far into the distance, filled with streets, buildings, and urban structures that mirrored a cityscape reminiscent of Coruscant's familiar layout.

"This really was a full city, wasn't it?" Mentis observed as his view panned, halting as he spotted Reave digging at an ancient slimline speeder that was ungracefully propped half up on the walkway, having long lost even its basic repulsorlift capability.

Not awaiting an answer from the Ithorian, he paced over to Reave, jolting suddenly as a metal canister suddenly flew out of the vessel towards him. With nimble reflexes, the Rattataki man shot out his hand and caught it.

"What's this?" Mentis asked, examining the item in his hand and observing a denser inner core and some thin coiled pipes wrapping around the cylindrical mechanism.

"Useful perhaps," Bomoor answered, peering over Mentis' shoulder at the find, "But not what we are looking for."

"He says it's a power converter," Mentis added more context from his slightly better take on Reave's Jawaese, "Era-matching the Raptor."

He gently tossed it back to the Jawa.

"It could come in handy, Reave, but let's keep moving now we've caught up to you."

Reave caught the converter neatly against his chest with a muted grunt, inspecting it briefly before shrugging and slinging it into a pouch at his side. He jabbered something sharp before hefting his oversized rifle once more and trudging off toward the avenue ahead. His small boots made dull, rhythmic thuds on the durasteel, the sound swallowed quickly by the smothered, low-pressure air.

The trio moved through the broken streets of the upper residential area. Windows were black, their transparisteel long since blown or melted away. Patches of flooring had buckled and sagged into the lower levels. Only the faint, rhythmic hum of ancient repulsor engines deep below reminded them that Cloud City still lived, in some tired way.

Their gaze shifted toward the skyline - what remained of it - where the old administrative palace spire rose from the platform’s edge. Its once-polished surface was partially blackened, scabbed over with plates of unfamiliar metal. The central tower leaned a few degrees off true, held upright only by the great tension cables running into its flanks.

Reave grunted, pointing with his free hand toward the structure, a curt motion that might have meant 'there'. The other two followed his gesture. Across the facade of the tower, something moved.

At first, it seemed a trick of the light, like reflections playing on the blackened plating, but then the motion repeated, deliberate and slow. A figure crawled along the outer wall, clinging to the cables and conduits as though born to them. Its limbs were long and too thin, moving with a sinuous rhythm that felt wrong for flesh. Under the amber haze of the gas giant’s light, something slick and metallic gleamed where skin should have been.

"What is that?" Bomoor queried, squinting towards the structure, "I cannot sense much from whatever it is."

Even from this distance, they could see the flaring of distorted musculature. Sinew and machine were woven together, lit by a faint orange glow that traced up one arm and across its throat - but not unlike some horrors Bomoor had already faced. The creature’s head was elongated, its eyes set too wide apart, its features unmistakably Gungan beneath the ruin - a face stretched and burned, the jaw reinforced with blackened implants.

The thing paused in its climbing, turning its head sharply toward the newcomers. A moment of stillness passed, but then its neck twisted further, too far, until it faced them fully. The orange light in its throat pulsed once, twice, like a heart remembering its rhythm.

A soft, wet chittering somehow reached them across the wind.

Reave exhaled a single raspy sound around the stub of his cigarra, lowering his blaster fractionally. He jabbered something under his breath - too dry to be fear, too tired to be surprise - and flicked the cigarra away, sparks spinning out into the gloom.

"It couldn't be," the Ithorian's gaze held on the disturbing creature, "It looks like a fabricant."

Mentis' eyes flicked to Bomoor, then back to the muddled creature silhouetted into the skyline.

"I never saw anything like this," he spoke hesitantly, as though he still should be remembering something, "But that glow, it's just like..."

A new sound then cut through the air behind them: a lightsaber igniting, rough and unstable, its blade coughing as if unwilling to hold form.

They turned.

A figure stood at the mouth of the street, robes tattered and heavy with oil stains, the hood drawn low. Its lightsaber sputtered in one hand - crimson light breaking into sickly orange at the edges. With its other hand, it wagged a single finger at them in slow admonishment.

The face beneath the hood was a network of glowing carvings traced beneath the skin, the same molten script as those cut into the walls elsewhere. The symbols writhed faintly, their light pulsing in time with the distorted hiss of the blade.

When the figure smiled, the glow caught on false metal teeth.

Reave’s blaster came up, the barrel whining as it powered, but the cultist, who had concealed his presence in the Force thus far, only tilted his head, chuckling in a guttural, broken voice that echoed strangely in the thin air.

"It's Kaiburr power," Bomoor growled igniting his pale blade and thrusting it to his side, in an open form, "We've all seen this glow before and, thanks to Korriban, I've seen how it gave movement to lifeless husks in ancient times. If I ever see Kip again, I'll tell him he was right on the money."

With a slight delay, Mentis followed suit and ignited his own deep crimson weapon and held it carefully before him. His undiluted pupil focussed on the orange glow that flowed along the figure's remaining skin like circuitry, adorned with those familiar glyphs and disappearing to somewhere under its dark cloak. The remaining skin was blackened and glassy around the glowing ridges.

“I remember…” he murmured, voice roughened by something between confusion and dread, “Axion… he gave one of the true crystal shards to a man; a craftsman of some kind, who said he had discovered the secret of the Kaiburr shards and could build a forge for Axion. I never saw him again...”

He drew in a breath through his teeth, the memory fragmenting as the scent of scorched oil and tabana gas filled the air. His unfocused eyes fixed again on the deformed figure before them.

“Was it you?”

The cultist twitched. Its head jerked to the side, the glyphs beneath its skin flaring brighter in jagged pulses, matching the stutter of its unstable blade. It opened its mouth as though to speak but only a distorted hiss escaped, like air escaping a broken vent. Then, with great effort, words formed through the grinding of metal on bone:

“...sssssilenccce… traitorrrr…”

The final word came out like a roar dragged through static. The air itself seemed to shudder.

The cultist lunged.

Its blade shrieked against the durasteel street, carving a molten arc through debris. Mentis brought his lightsaber up just in time to parry, the impact shuddering through his arms like a hammer strike. The heat felt wrong: the plasma sputtered and spat, its unstable core threatening to collapse.

Bomoor stepped in, his bulk moving with surprising speed. His blade came down in a heavy strike toward the cultist’s torso, forcing the creature to twist aside and, in the same motion, it hurled Mentis backward with a surge of corrupted energy.

Mentis staggered, boots scraping against the metal surface as he regained his footing. His eyes narrowed, catching flashes of a brilliant light within the creature’s torso: a heart of raw crystal, pulsing with each tortured breath.

The corrupted cultist’s unstable blade howled as it locked against Bomoor’s, sparks and molten droplets hissing where plasma tore through rusted air. Each movement seemed to pain the creature as much as it did its opponents. The glyphs along its neck pulsed violently, leaking thin lines of steam.

Reave kept his distance, darting behind a chunk of collapsed wall. His gloved fingers flicked across the pouches on his belt with mechanical precision, pulling free a compact satchel charge and a pair of sticky detonation caps. He muttered a string of curses and calculations. The stutter of his breathing and the rapid clicks of his equipment became a familiar rhythm of their own, but normally heard from their ship armoury.

He popped the primer and pressed the first cap to a fallen support strut, the arming light flickering to life.

Ahead, the duel slammed back into motion. The cultist’s clawed hand snapped out, seizing Bomoor’s sleeve and hurling a wash of crackling orange lightning up his arm. The Ithorian staggered but held firm, his viridian blade dragging low and breaking the connection in a single sweeping riposte. The dark warrior reeled, letting out a wet snarl that turned abruptly into laughter, static-tinged and mad.

Reave’s head jerked up at the sound. His glimmering eyes flicked toward the tower beyond them - movement again. Not one shape now, but many. Figures crawling over the ledges, pulling themselves from the darkness like spiders over webbing.

He spat a muffled curse from his shadowed mouth, jabbing a finger toward the skyline and barking a rapid series of warning yelps.

Mentis twisted just as the first of the newcomers dropped from a shattered window above — a heavy, rag-draped figure landing in a crouch. Then another. And another. Some bore crude lightsabers in varying shades of red and orange; others carried vibroswords, welding torches, or simple hatchets. Their faces were half-hidden, some bare flesh, others reinforced with blackened plating. The same molten glyphs ran beneath their skin like parasitic veins.

The sound of boots, claws, and metal scraping soon filled the air.

Reave ducked behind another pillar, the glow of his detonators casting sharp light across the brim of his oversized hat. He slammed a second charge into place, then jerked his head toward the others - a sharp motion that needed no translation, had they the chance to notice.

They were suddenly and increasingly outnumbered, and he was priming an escape.

As the first wave of cultists broke into a sprint, the air filled with the chorus of their distorted war-cries, voices stretched and torn by the machines grafted into their throats. The sound was halfway between chant and scream.

Reave thumbed the detonator’s safety off, muttering a low, grim stream in his native tongue that might have been a prayer or a threat.

"Careful, they know this place better than we do. Don't let them back us into a corner," Bomoor's eyes darted around, staying focused on the first cultist.

He summoned his inner fire and, with a roar of effort, hurled the deformed humanoid back. As it struggled to regain balance, Bomoor swung his viridian blade across its right side, grazing the skin and severing the arm clean below the shoulder.

The creature's skin cracked and shattered like molten glass as it collapsed to the ground, cursing in a strange, garbled tongue. Though only briefly: the glowing, pulsing skin grew brighter, and its curses morphed into mocking laughter. Using its remaining arm, the humanoid clawed at the ground, reaching for its lightsaber and starting to rise again.

Its laughter was echoed by the chilling voices of its brethren, surrounding the three newcomers in the desolate city.

TBC

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