Qymaen jai Sheelal opened his eyes and took a breath. It hurt. The light, the air that slowly filtered into his lungs. Fire, it felt as if he was breathing gaseous fire. What, what's going on?
{Am... I... dead?}
Talking hurt as well. It felt as if poison melted his pharynx and trachea. What happened, he wondered?
"Ah, you are awake, my friend. And yes, yes, very much alive. But your body has sustained nearly fatal wounds, due to your accident--"
Sheelal looked through the murky fluid that surrounded him in the tank he was in right now. He wondered at first, but then realised that he was inside a bacta tank. His head hurt as he tried to place the face he saw outside the tank. But eventually, he figured out it was a Muun.
{Who... are--?}
"My apologies. I am San Hill, chairman of the intergalactic Banking clan. And judging from the cloak we found, you are a Kaleesh General, are you not?"
'Kaleesh... yes, that's right, but... how is that possible? Am I dead? Did I die, or almost?'
"A very fortunate one, I might add. A Banking Clan Frigate accidentally picked up your escape pod's emergency beacon in the Jenuwaa Sea. Your crew was not so lucky, I'm afraid- But you, dear general, your mind and vital organs are safely in our care, here on Geonosis-"
{Geonosis?!... An honourable leader dies alongside his soldiers! Bring... bring me back to Kalee!}
'I say the words I feel are correct. I remember now, I'm Qymaen jai Sheelal, the Kaleesh male who is the greatest warrior. On my homeworld, I have been a powerful warlord and, rightfully, earned a remarkable bloody reputation as a Kaleesh warlord.'
"How touching, General. Do you really think the IBC would go through all this trouble only to let you die? You would not even survive a journey back to Kalee... let alone another four hours here without a blood transfusion. However, as fate would have it, your accident is almost... a blessing. You see, we have been funding a Geonosian Bionic Technology Project. And you, great general, are the perfect candidate for our experiment - and an experiment that will plunge you back into the heart of battle."
'I listen to the Muun and his lies hidden in half-truths. Is this my fate? To die as a pawn in a Muun's game, I didn't want to enter. To sell my body piece by piece and become a slave?'
{What good would an amputee be in the heart of battle?!}
"Therein lies the beauty of this technology. We can guarantee you a new self-sustaining body with appendages, free of cumbersome life-support systems. In fact, your new abilities may surpass even that of any... Jedi."
'I hear him speak to me like a snake, trying to sell me poison. But he is not wrong, I still have the feelings I always had as a great warlord. The Jedi went against us and chose to help our enemies. But they aren't the only ones.'
{The sooner I return to exterminating Huk colonies, the sooner I can redeem-}
"Your destiny is now beyond your futile wars with neighbouring planets. After all, the Republic is really to blame for all of our galaxy's struggles. A Confederacy of Independent Systems is in the making - and a Great Galactic War is inevitable. You will command the largest droid army in history, and in return, the IBC will relieve Kalee of its famine."
If Sheelal still had functioning skin and muscles on his forehead, he would have frowned at Sam Hill's words.
'I hate his voice and how he looks. I hate that he doesn't even try to hide his true intentions, with that ugly smile and that controlled face. But don't worry, I will remember you, San Hill.' Sheelal thought to himself.
"After you help us introduce a new order into the galaxy, you will be free to return to your people... as their greatest hero."
{Your 'new order' is meaningless to me.}
*Beep*
{ARRRRRRRRGH!!!}
"To die in a bacta tank does not befit a great warrior general such as yourself. Shame- what would your ancestors think?" Sam Hill said and electrocuted Sheelal again.
Sheelal felt the pain and all of his other wounds dialled up to a million. He felt his vision blur. He wondered why he had to be put through this, why the galaxy was so cruel to do this after he had been betrayed. He grows angry, but his anger is interrupted by another powerful shock.
*Beep*
{ARRRRRRRRGH!!!}
^That's quite enough, Muun.^
An eerie voice sounded through the metallic halls. The painful shock ceased right away, and Sam Hill turned around. The blast door opened, revealing a large stature of what was once a human... or so it seemed.
"Cawl."
Sam Hill was scared. He knew he was politically and financially powerful. He was important and valuable to many very powerful people in the galaxy. He toyed with his competitors and rivals, loved to see those that thought themselves smarter than him fail miserably... But the sight of Cawl was still something that made him sweat and turn around in fear.
Belsarius Cawl was less a man than a towering proof of his own conviction that machinery triumphed over flesh. No one knew where he came from; no one bothered to ask, seeing him, and no one dared.
His silhouette was grotesquely asymmetrical, a ton of augmetics rising where human flesh once was. Robes of crimson and oil-black were everyone else's saving grace, barely concealing the mass of pistons, machines, and archaic devices that twitch seemingly at random. Multiple limbs coiled and uncoiled behind his hunched form, ending in syringes, blades, data-spikes, and tools whose functions are better left unimagined.
His head, if it could still be called that, was a nest of cables and metal, a death mask of pale Beskar and steel, studded with lenses that glowed with machine-like, inhuman attention.
The terror of Cawl's appearance lay not in cruelty, an evil grin or just his disgusting appearance, but in his unbreakable indifference. He did not look at those around him as prey, nor as an enemy, but as material, tools, something to be catalogued, disassembled and improved. His many sensors were never quite focused the same way twice, suggesting that he was seeing the world around him across multiple spectra at once.
There was no rage in him, no hatred to bargain with and no desire that anyone knew of. He seemed to exist solely to create and invent new technology and weapons of destruction. And when he wasn't doing just that, helping Darth Tyranus and those who were connected to him, he was busy removing weakness from the very little remaining flesh he still had.
It had been Darth Tyranus' mysterious and elusive Master who had discovered the dread that was Belsarius Cawl. Back then, he still possessed a bit more flesh, and his tools and technology weren't as advanced as they were now. But that was the deal Sidious had with the Magos Mechanicus, as he dubbed himself.
To stand before Belsarius Cawl was to feel profoundly outdated. He was the quiet certainty that humanity could be overwritten, optimised, and replaced. He was the proof, at least in his mind, that the flesh was weak and that only the machine was immortal.
Sam Hill seemed almost to lose his bearings completely, judging from the amount he was sweating. Cawl didn't speak and only looked at him for a brief moment. Then he ignored him and walked into the room, looking at Sheelal with interest.
"I'll... urgh..."
Sam Hill rushed out of the room with a shudder running down his back. Sheelal looked at Cawl with disgust. Or he would have, had he had the necessary anatomic functions to do so.
^From the mmoment I understood the weakness of my flesh... it disgusted me... I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the machine...^
Cawl walked around the bacta tank. Several of his mechanical arms moved on their own, scanning what was left of Sheelal and forming calculations already.
^Their kind kling to their flesh, as if it would not decay... and fail them.^
Cawl arrived at the terminal and established a link between his processors that were his mind and the machinery present.
^One day their crude biomass that they call a temple will wither, and they will beg me to save them. Much like you... right now.^
From Cawl's mechanical eyes, hundreds of different holograms projected themselves into the air in front of him, giving him all the input he needed. With a thought, he took control of every machinery in the complex building they were in, ready for what was to come.
^But I am already saved... for the machine is... immortal.^
Cawl stared at the sad remains of Sheelal, the former warlord, who had once been so proud of his body and his skill. Now he floated there, in a bacta tank, weak and close to dying. What was he to do? How was he to return to the battlefield, if not for accepting what Cawl could give him?
He couldn't, and Sheelal understood that perfectly. Seeing the monstrosity that was Cawl and the way Sam Hill fled in panic, he wasn't as against it as he was initially.
{Very well... I... accept.}
^How fortunate for you, general. But it is amusing... for you to think... that you ever had a choice.^ Cawl said.
That was when the horror began.
.
The bacta drained. Not all at once, Cawl was not careless, but in measured increments. The warmth vanished first, Sheelal noticed, then buoyancy. Gravity returned, and a cruel, unfamiliar mechanical set of arms grabbed him. Qymaen jai Sheelal felt his ruined body settle into restraints on a technologically advanced operating table, which he had not noticed before. Rings of cold metal clamped around what remained of his shoulders, hips, and spine. His lungs spasmed as the last of the bacta film's healing properties peeled away from his lungs.
Air hit him like molten lava, and he screamed.
The sound was a strange shriek. High-pitched, wrong and accompanied by the rasp of the failing parts of his remaining lungs. It did not matter to Caw. He did not even flinch.
^Vocal distress acknowledged,^ Cawl intoned, not unkindly, not cruelly, merely stating a fact.
^Pain is confirmation of mortality and weakness, but also life. You persist, we shall commence.^
Metal arms descended from the ceiling and Cawl's body. The first cut was mercifully precise. Not like a butcher, but a surgeon. This was the result of years of training and Cawl's inherent skill. Sheelal could be thankful. What remained of the general's destroyed and ruined flesh was cut open, peeled off and separated with an efficiency that surpassed anything the galaxy could produce.
However, simply because Cawl was terrifyingly skilled didn't mean that it hurt. Because it did… A LOT.
Bone-saws roared to life, incision-lasers cut into the flesh and bones, the remaining nervous system lit up like a supernova, and every remaining sensation was screamed out of the poor sod's lungs as much as he could.
He tried to remember Kalee. The red dust, the masks of his people, the way the wind howled across the plains before battle. He clung to those memories as his last stance, his last defiance against death, thinking that his incredible mental strength would deliver him through this terror… but Cawl reached even the furthest parts of his mind.
Literally.
A spike slid into the base of his skull. The beginnings of a data plug, where Cawl would upload information and program his newest creation later on. Unlike what Sheelal thought, unlike what Tyranus or his Master wanted, this was not merely about creating a general of a droid army. No, Cawl had bigger plans for this specimen.
Data poured into Sheelal's remaining brain lobe. These were not merely images or sounds but a set of programming that Cawl had created and designed himself. Measurements of himself, of what he wanted him to be.
Weaknesses were enumerated in Cawl's mind, the warlord's failures quantified. His muscles were listed as inefficient bundles of decay, his organs flagged as redundant, and his pain, finally, was tagged as nonessential. Cawl downloaded all this information and uploaded what he wanted into Sheelal's brain processors.
^You were a predator once,^ Cawl observed, almost contemplatively. ^But you were limited by biology. Reaction lag, structural fatigue and finite endurance.^
Sheelal's fading consciousness felt something inside him being partitioned. Not fully removed but isolated by Cawl's incredibly advanced biotechnology. Rage, grief, pride, the ancestral weight of honour and his very own vengeance… all of it shunted behind walls of code and chemical dampers as Cawl worked. The former warlord could still sense them, distantly, like seeing them through armoured glass.
He wanted to break that glass, to get his emotions back, to get back who he was. But his body did not respond. That was the worst part.
His legs were next. They were unsalvageable, Cawl decided. The Kaleesh's lower limbs were stripped to the hip, cut off, ripped off the hip bones and replaced entirely. Inviolate alloy pistons locked into reinforced sockets fused directly to the pelvic frame. Gyroscopic stabilisers hummed to life, correcting balance before he even took the first step.
Cawl connected these functions to the replaced brain lobe, which was now fully mechanical. He coded everything the way he wanted.
^Observe,^ Cawl said, unbothered about the fact that he couldn't.
Sheelal's arms followed, though not wholly. Where flesh still had tactical value, it was preserved—threaded through with bionic musculature, plasteel tendons woven through what remained of sinew. Extra joints were added for surprise and higher flexibility and speed. Redundancy layered upon redundancy. Four arms sprouted from his shoulders, each capable of independent motion, each slaved to a central command nexus that now pulsed where his heart once struggled to keep him alive.
The heart… died quietly. In its place, a multi-chambered pump of metal and synth-muscle began to beat, each pulse synchronised with the reactor core nested behind his sternum. Breath was no longer required, but Cawl allowed him lungs anyway, bellows of metal and membrane, not for survival, but for sound. For the feeling of terror when enemies heard him.
But also, to give Tyranus and his Master the sense of superiority. They had to be certain they could kill Cawl's creation whenever it had served its purpose, and for that reason, he created visible and audible weaknesses. But only Cawl would know that they were merely superficial.
^Symbolism has value,^ Cawl mused.
The final indignity was his face. The mask of a Kaleesh warrior was sacred. It was earned through blood and battle. Cawl took it from him. What remained was elongated, reshaped and reinforced. The skull was flensed and rebuilt into a death-mask of pale alloy and blackened Beskar, its shapes looking very Kaleesh. The dead singular eye was replaced with multiple, overlapping lenses, each tuned to a different spectrum. His jaw was removed entirely so he could speak through an apparatus. Food and water were no longer important.
.
Several days passed, and when Cawl was finally finished, he stepped back. For the first time since entering the room, the Magos regarded his work.
^Designation pending. Skitarii-Alpha equivalent. Command-grade. Emotional partition: selective. Memory retention: selective. Loyalty architecture: external and guaranteed.^
A pause.
^Overtaking process: finished. This is acceptable. Emotions are an unstable factor, but necessary at this moment. They are properly constrained.^
Power was turned on, and Sheelal, no, not Sheelal anymore, arched as his systems came online. Targeting circles appeared in his vision, and tactical overlays nested themselves in his thoughts. Waves of data flowed through him, becoming part of him. He understood war now in a way he never would have before.
Sheelal had died. Gone, never to be seen again. What emerged was a metallic creation that followed the basics of Sheelal's personality and character, only that it was simulated. Cawl inclined his head, just slightly.
^Yes. That will do. Welcome... General Grievous.^
Somewhere, far away, the name Qymaen jai Sheelal flickered before being archived, compressed, and buried beneath billions of lines of code. General Grievous took his first step. The floor would have cracked beneath his weight, but through several uses of advanced technology, he seemed to weigh ridiculously little.
________
The name is not a mistake. I purposely changed it from Warhammer's Belisarius -> Belsarius.