Pain. Suffering. Death. Over and over and over, like a plague sweeping across the galaxy, causing everything it touches to wither and die. The darkness crushes everything in its path, then nothing. Then it begins again, scenes from a holovid. The fountain. The robes. The swords of pure beautiful light. The Fo... The course? The source? Something is wrong, something is missing. Then are the soldiers, clad in distinctive, almost tribal, armor, not of the darkness but touched by it. They spread, and we put up no resistance. We? Who is we? There is an argument, some of us leave. To where? To stand against the soldiers, of course. Source. Remorse. What is it? We march and the soldiers are driven back, back, to the planet at the edge of space. Malachor V. That name cannot be forgotten. Refuses to die, a ghost that haunts. How appropriate. And then, beyond that... Pain. Suffering. Death. Darkness. Then, the maps. Not old, ancient. Then, the temple. No, not a temple. Not a shrine, either. Not a factory, or armory, or shipyard. A monument, perhaps, a hulking, menacing testament to the arrogance of those who built it. But useful, nonetheless. A slight flickering flame to light the great fire to stand against the darkness. But will it burn brightly or be reduced to ashes? Then... familiar faces, first scorn, then disgust, then hated, and finally... fear. Fear because of me. They don't know what fear is. Fear is darkness, choking, strangling, smothering, consuming you and extinguishing everything and everyone and death and destruction and silence and-
Fear is the reason why. They ask why, pleading, as though what I'm doing is horrible. They don't know the meaning. Genocide is unfortunate, mass extinction a tragedy, the utter annihilation of all life in our galaxy? Now that... that is horrible. War is barely an inconvenience. They are weak. Not from the war before, the war I led them in, they were weak before that. They argue and bicker and everyone takes a cut until there's nothing left for anyone else. If I have to destroy this old, weak, useless society in order to save it, then I will. First dozens of systems fall to me, then hundreds. Eventually I don't even have to fire a shot when I arrive, they simply roll over and give up.
Then... the one with gold in her hands and gold in her eyes. She is not enough to change anything but she slows me down, which is more than anyone else has done. I want her. She is... interesting. Powerful. And young, less certain, more... afraid. I watch her, and then they devise a plan, so devious, so cunning, so idiotically, blatantly obvious I'm offended they think it will work. And so unlike them, desperation shows their true colors. Sending children to be assassins, how disgusting. But it delivers her right to me, so who am I to complain? I allow them to board, keep my troops away, herd them to the bridge where I can fight them all unimpeded. The 'elite' troopers I kill immediately, they were foolish to come and should have known better. The others though, I take my time with.
It's been so long since I've had a good spar, it's enjoyable to deal with them the old-fashioned way. There were four of them, easy enough, but then she was there. They fought harder and longer than they should have, and I almost had to actually try to defeat them. Almost. And then she fought, and it was magnificent. She moved with such ethereal grace, as though she were in tune with some greater power, and it was beautiful to watch. There was no threat to me, the fools that commanded her used her only for her ability and discarded her when they grew desperate, without properly training her, but I enjoyed toying with her, watching her struggle to persevere, to hold out, such determination... it makes sense that she would be able to inspire such greatness in her allies when she is so filled with it herself. But eventually she tired, and I disarmed her. Well not literally, ha. Before I could have a proper chat with her, however, something happened... an explosion? Alek! That useless hutt-slime! He betrayed me, tried to force his way into my... wait, force? What is-
A/N: I'm not dead! I'm so sorry my other stories have been dumped by the wayside, I really want to rewrite my Pokemon fic and finish it but it just seems so intimidating and I really just can't bring myself to do it. And I want to finish my TwoKinds fic but I was just hit by the urge to write this so… here it is. You're just going to have to take what you can get.