Chapter 52 (Patreon)

“Nonsense. An artificially created organism is a homunculus.”

“With all due respect, Xo, your claims reek of the clergy’s narrow-mindedness from a light-year away! What I’m talking about specifically is absolutely not a homunculus.”

“Lady XoXaan! And there isn’t a drop of respect in your words, Red-Eyes!”

“There is! It’s just… disguised!” the sorcerer shot back. “Come on, seriously! If it quacks like a duck, flies like a duck, and loves bread like a duck—it’s a duck! I’ve had more than enough of this homunculus nonsense back home! I’m talking about an artificially created organism that is no different from one that was born naturally, not some crude lump of flesh cobbled together by hand!”

“I don’t know what a duck is, but an artificially created body—whatever species it belongs to—is a homunculus.” The ghost regarded the red-eyed man unyieldingly, arms folded beneath her breasts to make it clear she had no intention of conceding the argument.

“I’ll show you.” He snorted, rolled his eyes, walked over to the vat of “soup,” as the sorcerer called the mass inside, and went still. Once again, the Force rolled off him, tinged with the scent of freshly spilled blood.

“And how long are you going to keep showing me this?” his conversational partner asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Give it about twenty minutes. The organism needs time to form,” Siith’khara’Dziha replied, shooting the Force ghost an irritated look.

“And this organism”—the Force ghost tilted her head to one side, studying something in the vat—“will, as you put it, quack, fly, and love bread?”

“No.” The sorcerer took a few steps toward the small table where his mug sat and took a sip of caf. “How is it supposed to do any of that if there’s no soul in it? There’s no pilot, understand?!”

“That’s why it’s called a homunculus!” XoXaan threw up her hands. “Why are you so dense?! It can’t live on its own—period! You can imprint the simplest behavioral patterns into it, basic instincts, if you want! Make its heart beat, make it breathe! You could even make it walk, quack, fly, and eat bread if you put enough effort into it! But it still wouldn’t be a living being capable of developing on its own!”

“This! Will! Be! A duck!!!” The red-eyed man planted his hands on his hips and glared irritably at the translucent figure. “A duck’s body, one hundred percent indistinguishable from one that hatched from an egg and grew up naturally under ideal conditions! Put a soul into it, and you don’t need any programming at all! It’ll just live, quack, fly, and eat bread without me having to do anything else! It’ll even be able to reproduce! It’s just a grown body—I don’t see why anyone should curl their lip at it like it’s some inferior thing! You simply don’t understand what I’m talking about! How about you just shut up and stop embarrassing yourself?”

Three pairs of worried eyes followed the conversation between the red-eyed sorcerer and the ghost of the ancient Sith Lady.

The Dathomiri witches had been hastily dragged out of their cells three days ago, cleaned up, given fresh clothes, and sent to the tomb. Now they brewed caf and herbal decoctions for the red-eyed man, carried out various minor errands… and were afraid.

Because they had been sent here on the principle of whoever wouldn’t be missed.

That might have been insulting, perhaps even infuriating, but… the presence of the Sith Lady had left nothing in their souls but fear. The sense of incredible power emanating from her was simply too overwhelming. Besides, she clearly had no intention of tolerating unnecessary noise. A single “lesson” from the ghost had been more than enough. So had the bouts of irritation she occasionally took out on them.

Now all three stood silent, afraid even to whisper among themselves, watching two of the three most terrifying beings in the galaxy… bicker over some subject the witches didn’t even understand.

The first of the three—though ranked firmly last—was Mother Talzin, whom the witches hated with a savage intensity matched only by their fear of her. She had literally given them away to the sorcerer, after which some creatures had been moved in with them and violated the minds of all five of them.

In second place stood the sorcerer himself. Strange, powerful, perfectly capable of speaking calmly with Mother Talzin—and the one who had freed their minds from the grip of her sorcery.

And now he was trading insults with… that.

The ghost of the ancient Sith Lady, XoXaan.

No, the girls had no idea who she was, but her mere presence was enough to make breathing difficult, their knees go weak, and their speech start to stumble whenever she turned her attention toward them.

And after Lady XoXaan, during their very first meeting, decided that one of the Dathomiri women had dared cast a disrespectful glance at the ancient dark gifted…

the witches awarded her a thoroughly well-deserved first place.

“It’s a definition,” the Lady insisted, watching as the sorcerer pulled some kind of bird out of the vat and laid it on a medical table. All this equipment set up in one of the tomb’s chambers, right next to a Sith holocron, looked rather bizarre. “I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up over this. Is it personal? There’s a clone, there’s a homunculus, and there’s someone naturally born—say, a human. What exactly is your problem with that?”

“It’s just a body without a soul,” the sorcerer sighed. “Not a homunculus.”

“Ugh…” The ghost wearily covered her face with her left hand and extended the right toward the sorcerer. Powerful, branching Force lightning burst from her fingers, but for all its strength, it tangled against the spherical shield that flared to life around the sorcerer and the table.

“Calmed down?” the red-eyed man asked mockingly once the lightning finally died away.

“Almost.” The translucent woman bared her teeth in an angry grin and flicked a hand toward the three witches.

“Oh, come on…” the sorcerer sighed as one of the Dathomiri women’s heads twisted around a full hundred and eighty degrees with a sickening crunch. “Aren’t you tired of that yet?”

“That’ll teach you to piss me off,” XoXaan said with a satisfied squint, watching as the dead witch’s head twisted back into place with an equally sickening crunch. “And honestly, this is rather convenient. Wouldn’t you like to enter my service? I can’t even remember how many useful sentients died because I happened to be irritated.”

“So much for ‘emotions should serve the gifted,’” Siith snorted as the dead woman opened her eyes, gasping rapidly and clutching at her throat with both hands. “Don’t move your head around,” the sorcerer told her. “The bones aren’t back in place yet. Sit still for five minutes.”

“How interesting.” The Sith Lady leaned over the recently dead Dathomiri woman, making all three witches flinch in fear. “That’s the eleventh time I’ve watched it happen, and I still can’t grasp the underlying principle.”

“You’ve been snapping their necks just for that?” Siith asked in surprise, frowning with obvious displeasure.

“Combining business with pleasure.” The ghost shrugged, reappearing beside the medical table. “I get to blow off some steam and study an interesting phenomenon at the same time. So then, what do we have here?”

The Lady passed her right hand over the bird several times.

“Oh, could you do that again?” the sorcerer asked once the translucent woman finished whatever she was doing.

“I don’t repeat myself for the deaf, and I don’t demonstrate things twice for the blind. Force techniques are useless to you anyway,” the Sith Lady snorted. “So. This is a homunculus.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” the sorcerer said, rolling his eyes in irritation. “Look.”

The man pulled a small crystal from somewhere beneath his robes and placed it beside the motionless bird. A knife slipped free from the sheath at his belt and began carving some kind of pattern directly into the tabletop.

The ancient ghost watched the whole process with curiosity, though every so often she glanced at the crystal with unmistakable surprise.

“Right,” the sorcerer said once the pattern was complete and the knife had slipped back into its sheath. “And now…”

The lines filled with a greenish glow. The crystal lit up and rose a couple of centimeters above the surface of the table.

A few seconds later, everything went dark.

“Aaaand?” XoXaan drawled.

Instead of answering, the sorcerer pointed a finger at the bird.

“Up!” Siith barked, and an arc of electricity leapt from his finger.

The bird convulsed, scrambled to its feet, and began beating its wings while looking around in a panic.

“Well? What do you think?”

“This…” XoXaan tilted her head, staring at the bird in surprise. “What in the world was that?”

“I put a soul into the body,” the sorcerer said, narrowing his eyes in satisfaction. “I didn’t have a duck’s soul on hand, of course, so right now it’s got that… what was it? Lizard, reptile… Trandoshan!!!”

“Put into it? Is that some form of possession?”

“No, no.” The sorcerer smiled in satisfaction. “No possession involved. There’s simply a complete soul in the duck’s body now. Its cognitive functions will, of course, gradually degrade to a level appropriate for the bird’s brain, but that’ll only make it more natural. So our hunter is now doomed to live out the life of a little bird on the prey end of the food chain. Rather ironic, really…”

“So that crystal…” XoXaan glanced toward the spot where the little stone should have been lying, only to find a small pile of dust in its place.

“A soul prison,” Siith said with a nod. “Single-use. Back home, several thousand years ago, inventing things like these was the first step toward creating a full-fledged phylactery. Something along the lines of your holocron. Though the Sith creation is built on a different method and, in some respects, is more sophisticated, as far as I can tell. But the underlying principle is the same.”

“Wait… hold on…” The ghost was clearly thinking, shifting her gaze from the holocron to the little pile of dust left behind by the crystal.

And it would have been fine if she’d stopped there…

The ancient gifted turned a strangely intent stare on the three witches.

A heartbeat later, one of them was hanging in the air in front of the ghost, who seemed to have teleported straight to her.

“Again?!” the sorcerer threw up his hands. The two frozen witches clearly decided their “friend” was about to meet her end yet again, but…

The ghost seemed to be sucked into the eyes and mouth of the Dathomiri hanging in midair. After that horrifying display, the witch stopped levitating and landed awkwardly on her feet.

“Oh…” was all the red-eyed man managed to say as the witch began awkwardly stretching and testing out her body.

“A little cramped,” the Dathomiri complained in two voices at once—her own and XoXaan’s. The whole thing was disturbingly reminiscent of Mother Talzin possessing a medium Sister.

The eyes were especially unsettling: two pits opening into the abyss of space, with amber sparks like distant stars drifting in their depths.

XoXaan, wearing someone else’s body, went through a few warm-up motions with her arms, rolled her neck from side to side, bent forward and straightened up again. Then, walking with a slight sway, she made her way to the only armchair beside the coffee table and dropped into it.

The Sith Lady, still inhabiting the Dathomiri witch’s body, pulled the sorcerer’s enormous mug closer and filled it with the steaming black liquid from the caf pot.

“All right, sorcerer. How did you do that?”

Siith once again displayed the horrifying grin he usually called a smile and, with a wave of his hand… grew an armchair out of the stone floor beside the table.

“A little hard,” he complained as he settled into it across from the Lady. “And that brings us neatly back to the difference between a homunculus and a ‘real organism.’”

For several seconds, the two most terrifying beings in the galaxy, at least in the opinion of the witches trembling with fear, stared into each other’s eyes.

“So…” the Sith began slowly. “You mean that with a homunculus…”

“Exactly.” The sorcerer nodded. “If the duck had been a homunculus, ‘putting a soul into it’ would’ve been more like possession. The soul would simply ‘wear’ the body like a suit, and knocking it out again would take next to no effort. More or less like what you did with this girl. By the way, she isn’t going to burst, is she?”

“She’ll last a few hours,” Lady XoXaan replied thoughtfully. “Worst case, I’ll heal your slave. Don’t worry.”

“She’s not exactly a slave…”

“Oh, come on.” The possessed witch waved a hand dismissively as she watched a chunk of stone “flow” in the sorcerer’s hands, reshaping itself into another mug. “Prisoner, slave… guest. Call them whatever you like, the meaning’s the same. They were given to you, you make use of them, and their lives are in your hands. More importantly, my friend…”

“Friend?” the sorcerer asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

“Brother,” the Sith said with a cheerful smile. “Friend, brother, dear guest, esteemed colleague. Tell a girl what it takes to create one of those… not-homunculi? For me to create one myself. And perform that… soul transfer on my own?”

“Mmm… Is doing it yourself the important part? I mean both creating the body and transferring the soul.”

“Of course. Don’t misunderstand me, you’re an interesting sentient. But trusting someone else to create a body for me, placing myself in someone else’s hands… Mmm… no, sorry. You and I are a little too alike, and that alone is the clearest sign that I absolutely should not trust you with something like that.” The possessed woman took a sip of caf and grimaced slightly. “How do you even drink this swill? You”—the Lady pointed at one of the witches—“brew me a decoction. From that jar.”

“Can’t argue with that. I wouldn’t trust you in a situation like that either,” the red-eyed man said with a thin smile, watching as they brewed XoXaan’s drink. “But if you want to grow the body and perform the transfer yourself, you’ll have to learn. I don’t know how to reproduce anything like this through a Force-based tradition. For a sorcerer… you need a solid command of ritualism—that’s for the transfer itself. Chimerology and necromancy are mandatory for growing a body that is NOT a homunculus. None of it is simple, and none of it is quick. You want to calculate everything yourself, don’t you… my dear friend Xo?”

The possessed woman shot the sorcerer a vicious glare, her jaw working for several seconds before she finally exhaled and calmed down.

“All right… what do you want in exchange for that knowledge?”

“First, let’s clarify something. Why do you want it?”

“Obviously, for no reason at all.” The possessed woman snorted, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in the chair.

The sorcerer merely raised an eyebrow with a quiet hum and continued staring at her expectantly.

“Don’t believe me? Then you’re not completely brainless.”

“Thank you. Your acknowledgment that I possess a functioning mind is like honey poured over my soul,” the red-eyed man said with a grin.

“Tch. You really piss me off sometimes.” XoXaan grimaced. “You’re sure you’re not one of my old ‘friends’? Karness Muur? That name mean anything to you? He was another nasty, quarrelsome old fossil. No? I’m not even sure whether to be relieved or disappointed…

“Fine, never mind. I want flesh again. Existing as a Force ghost is fascinating, of course. My neighbors are delightful and endlessly talkative, and life in the galaxy is like an entertaining holoshow starring nothing but idiots… In short, it’s all so thrilling that ‘sleeping’ for a few thousand years at a time starts to seem like a perfectly reasonable alternative.”

“Wanting flesh again is obvious enough,” the sorcerer said with a calm nod, showing not the slightest trace of sympathy. “If I knew that was all you wanted—and that afterward you’d simply live quietly without causing… trouble across half the galaxy—I’d agree without a problem. You’d share your knowledge with me, I’d share mine with you, everyone walks away happy. But as far as I know, your lot has never been particularly good at peaceful, quiet lives, have you?”

“Pfff!” The witch snorted and burst out laughing. “Go on, then. Tell me the fairy tale about how deeply you care about the fate of the galaxy! We’ve known each other for three days, and I can already see how little you give a damn about all that nonsense! A handful of worlds, a few sentients you personally happen to like, a dozen or two business deals that matter to you. My dear friend, all of that can be arranged.

“The worlds you need, I’ll place at your disposal. As for the sentients important to your peace of mind, I’ll make sure not so much as a speck of dust touches them. Your business interests may suffer, of course, but I promise I’ll offer you something more profitable in return. And naturally, XoXaan will provide whatever knowledge interests you. Sith, Jedi, anything you like.

“I’ll become your shield against all the galaxy’s troubles—your guarantee that you can work in peace and comfort. You don’t care about power anyway, do you?”

“Mmm…” The sorcerer rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s… rather sudden. And remarkably straightforward.”

“I see no point in dancing around the issue with someone who, in truth, barely gives a damn about anything except his beloved… magic. And as for sudden—I’m not proposing marriage.” Another venomous smile. “So take as long as you like to think it over. Just not longer than a day.

“Keep one thing in mind: a Sith Lord grateful to a certain red-eyed sorcerer—even if she is only not yet the ruler of the galaxy—is a very, very profitable thing to have.”

“And troublesome. I can already see the newborn resistance fighters swimming toward me in schools, all eager to screw me over…”

“And we won’t tell anyone a thing. Like I said, everything can be arranged.” The possessed woman took a sip of the fresh herbal decoction and narrowed her eyes in pleasure. “Now this is good. Not that black, stinking swill.”