As she approached the summit of the rocky outcrop in the desert, she looked down at the baby in her arms, her little boy, who would now become the Prince of Zakuul. She already felt a connection to this child, as if he was her blood. And even that, he would become.
Shifting the premature infant into one arm, she raised the other, firing a precise, constant bolt of lightning from her fingers, carving a blood ritual altar into the dark brown rock. It took the shape of a pentagram within a circle, formed of inch-deep scored lines in the rock, perfectly forged forever into the dark sandstone of the desert. She placed him gently in the centre of the pentagram.
Summoning a rock, she applied pressure with the Force, shattering it into sharp shards. Taking the largest, she held it in her hand. Slicing open her palm, she allowed her powerful blood to drop into the Dark Side carving, and cried out in the language of the Force.
"Vezmite toto diét'a, ktoré sa narodilo príliš skoro, a dokončil ho oj mne! Nech moju bytosť pohltí z jeho matky, zrod ho ako moju krv!"
Her blood became electrified with purple lightning that erupted from her fingertips and flowed through the altar she'd made, into the premature baby. It evaporated into a bloody mist that wrapped around him, compressed into sphere around him, then smashing into her stomach slipping through with the baby and leaving her gasping for breath as her body changed to accommodate the infant, and his genes inherited from his mother were replaced by her own, making him her blood.
Once her young body has finished changing to accommodate the infant, she found herself now 7 months pregnant, taking over where he had been born too soon. He was hers now.
"Our future awaits, my son." She told him with a dark glee.
Her stolen ship came out of hyperspace to be greeted by the sight of the Eternal Fleet. With a wicked grin, Vaylin found herself pleased that Zakuul still stood. A fifth of her amazingly fast power had returned in the days it had taken to reach Wild Space, where the prosperous world existed outside the galaxy's knowledge. Now she could take whatever usurper there was off the Eternal Throne with ease, and reclaim her seat of power. Putting through the executive code she possessed as the Empress, she bypassed the fleet, slipping past the warships controlled by the GEMINI units.
She docked with the Spire.
The doors opened, and she threw the Knights of Zakuul who guarded them against the walls with the Force, knocking them out. No need to kill those who would soon serve her. She advanced though the Spire's defenses, which hadn't changed in the 3000 years since she had ruled, only temporarily disabling any Knights, but crushing the Skytroopers entirely. They were machines, manufactured in massive amounts for numbers, there were not living. They could be replaced.
Opening the doors to the Throne Room with a twitch of her fingers, she stalked along the walkway, standing before the twin lines of Knights, addressing the man on the Eternal Throne. "I want my Empire back."
"And you are?" He inquired lazily, as if she was some peasant.
"Empress Vaylin of the Eternal Empire, formerly High Justice, daughter of the Immortal Emperor Valkorion."
He waved his hand dismissively, signalling the Knights. "I doubt it. Remove her."
Cackling at his foolishness, she powerfully intoned the trigger phrase that had once controlled her, forcing the armoured figures to their knees with her raw power.
"Kneel before the Dragon of Zakuul!"
The lazy Emperor rose to his feet in absolute shock that she could subjugate the Knights of Zakuul with mere words and such power. He shook himself from his stupor and drew a yellow bladed lightsaber, crying, "For Zakuul!"
Striding to meet his charge, she hit him a weak Force blast, sending him tumbling past her as she mounted the dais and turned back to face him.
"I am Zakuul, and Zakuul is me. The Eternal Empire belongs to me, it's time I take it back." She sneered.
She raised her hand and unleashed a furious and continuous river of violent purple Force Lightning upon the usurper, relishing in his absolutely agonised screams as she overloaded his brain and heart simultaneously, killing him, his flesh being melted and his clothes and hair burned. He collapsed and she disregarded the corpse, allowing the Knights to rise from their knees and activating the planet-wide hologram broadcast.
"People of Zakuul. I am Vaylin, former High Justice and Empress of Zakuul, and today I reclaim the Eternal Throne after 3 millennia. Your now former Emperor has retired, and now I return to rule our great society as it should be ruled. You will be safe, you will be protected, this is my vow to you, the people. Long live Zakuul!"
She shut off the broadcast and smiled as ordered the stolen ship destroyed. She'd channeled Arcann's silver tongue with that speech. He had a way with words.
Briefly reacquainting herself with the Throne Room, she sat down on the seat of power, feeling it connect with her, dismissing the Knights. She had returned. Satisfied with her position, she gazed down at the baby inside her. He was shifting within her.
"Hello little one." She cooed at him, getting a happy but gentle kick in return. "Aren't you precious?"
Laying a hand on her stomach, she closed her eyes with a genuine, happy smile.
Then she heard a voice.
"Vaylin…"
She knew that voice. Thexan, her brother. She answered. "Thexan?"
A light shone across her eyelids, and she opened them to see the same astral version of her brother that she had prior to her death. "You're home, little sister. You're safe now."
"Was all this your doing?" She inquired.
"It is the will of the Force, not my own that delivered you to this time after your death. I have limited power in the galaxy so long as I anchor myself here, but I can only appear before a select few at this time. You are the only one I can reach at the moment, my spirit has been tied to the kyber crystal in my lightsaber since the day I departed my physical body. However, I am not the only one to have remained in wait."
"Who else?"
"Mother became a Force Ghost like myself and sealed her astral essence inside a holocron she created that now reside in the Royal Vault. I stayed awake all these centuries, to see your return. She has slept, waiting for you as I have."
She didn't know how to respond to that. He spoke again.
"I can show you how to release her, so that you can…"
"No!" She screamed at her long dead brother, silencing him with her vehement response. "I don't ever want to see her again! She betrayed me!"
"She didn't betray you Vaylin, you betrayed yourself. You threw yourself into the darkness and allowed it to twist your mind until now… you have become everything Father ever desired you to be but obedient. You never obeyed him unless it suited you. You followed Arcann out of what little loyalty you could muster, solely because he brought you out of Nathema. Did you never stop to realise that he too drowned in the void of the Force there, his sanity was poisoned and he lost his ability for tolerance in that place? You are not the only member of this family to suffer."
"SHUT UP!" Vaylin screamed once more, this time hurling lightning at him as she surged from the Throne. It struck his astral form and became absorbed into him. The yellow glow around him intensified, and he became far more powerful in appearance.
Resignation filled his blue eyes. "And so… it is time for a lesson."
Her next blast of lightning streaked across the dais and Thexan caught it with his hand, absorbing it. She hurled more bolts at him with a fury unlike any other, and he absorbed them all.
With a howl of rage, Vaylin ignited her lightsaber and swung it at him, but he held up his open left hand, stopping the yellow blade inches from it. He'd frozen her in place. He locked eyes slowly with her and without a single warning, her weapon deactivated. His right hand rose and then descended slowly. Against her will, the Empress found herself lowering to her knees, hands planted on the floor as he brought her to it. He had forced her to kneel before him.
"Now do you understand? In death I have become more powerful than you can imagine. I am a part of the Living Force now, and my power comes to me from it. My strength now surpasses yours, my sister."
Crouching next to her, Thexan tilted her chin so that she was looking at him.
"Your strength has waned Vaylin. Returning from death out of fear of it, suffering the fatal wound for hours so to heal your body, exerting your powers to perform heinous murder, taking the baby into yourself to make him yours out of greed and jealousy. The Force is almost entirely diverted to the child inside you, replacing his old mother's genetics in him with yours, changing his body's very being. In doing all this, you have made yourself so vulnerable that I, a spirit of the Netherworld of the Force, can subdue you with ease." He told her just as calmly as ever.
Glancing down at the deactivated lightsaber in her hand, he gave a sigh of lament. "Your lightsaber betrays you because it was forged by me. Arcann rescued you, but I armed you. My mistake."
Vaylin felt a sharp impact from the inside of her now occupied womb, then a tightening feeling in her abdomen, and they had taken her by surprise to say the least. She dropped to the ground, subconsciously curling up. She didn't even realise Thexan had released her. She only noticed when he laid his hand on her upper arm in a gesture of comfort.
Checking she was alright, the Force Ghost stretched out with the Force, closing his eyes and focusing, finding himself at the equator between rage and serenity. He reached out with his hand, and feeling the connection he sought, made the motion of accessing a computer terminal. Feeling it had been done, he disconnected from the technology on the other end, connected with something, someone this time.
A moment of silence passed.
With a violent hiss, the blade of the young Empress's lightsaber spat from the hilt, impaling Thexan through the centre of his torso as her eyes blazed with the fire of darkness. He felt no pain from it, but his form lost corporeality. She extinguished it, rising to her feet, left hand pressed to her abdomen.
"And so you have betrayed me, brother." She whispered, but with a hint of sadness in her voice that was seeped with venom.
She raised the unignited weapon, but before she could activate it to strike at him again, it was ripped from her grasp and flew into a hand that clamped around it in a fist. She turned to face the intruder, and saw the hand that held her weapon from her.
The metal, cybernetic hand.
"I'm sorry Vaylin."
She opened her mouth to reply, but the black claimed her before she could speak as Thexan used the Force to make her pass out. He telekinetically lowered her to the ground gently, then looked up.
"Arcann."
The scarred man clad in white looked the same as the day Vaylin had died and vanished. That was due to the actions he had taken following her death. He had aided the Outlander in banishing Valkorion's spirit, than submitted himself to the carbonite chamber, where he'd slept, dormant, for 3000 years. So more or less, he was in the same state as when their sister had perished, for he had been frozen the very same day, no time for rest or recuperation.
"Thexan." Arcann acknowledged, hooking the confiscated lightsaber to the back of his belt as he approached. "It has been… so long and my path has been so dark since I last saw your face, my brother. Darker than I ever dreamed it could be. It still haunts me."
He knelt beside their unconscious sister. "To see her like this again… tears at my heart."
"At least she is not dead, whatever small mercy that may be." Thexan replied.
"Before she died, Vaylin renounced the Dark Side, so why does it reside in her now?"
"The Force abandoned her momentarily, she didn't renounce it. She is the same now as she always has been since Nathema, lost, blind."
Resolute, Arcann lifted the youngest of them up in his arms, carrying the 23 year old woman with some effort due to his exhausted state to the bedchamber where she had resided 3000 years ago. As they walked, the Force Ghost twin noticed the unconscious Knights, the ones Vaylin had dismissed, and the pikes and shields strewn across the floor.
"You didn't even draw your weapon did you?"
"There… was no need. You would be surprised at the advantages a cybernetic arm grants." He replied. "That and the Force is weapon enough."
Laying the once-again Empress down on her bed as she swifted in her sleep, the white clad warrior stood at the foot of the bed, wrapping both lightsabers on his belt loosely in the Force, to prevent them being called from his possession. Thexan left briefly.
Vaylin jolted awake with a rapid intake of breath. The moment her vision focused, she saw Arcann, exactly as she'd seen him not two weeks ago for her, in reality 3000 years. His eyes were the same.
Then she noticed the object in his hands. A small cube that had windows in it, emitting yellow light from within, and was created with the Force in balance. It was little bigger than a child's ball and held a despicably familiar presence within it. Her mother's holocron, she realised. The instant she regained her voice, she snapped at her living brother. "Unlock that holocron and I will make your death agony beyond imagining!"
"There is no pain you could ever cause that I haven't already endured." He returned solemnly. His pain-wracked blue eyes struck something inside her.
Then he called in the Force and unlocked the holocron, the corners detaching and floating as a bright yellow light shone from it, releasing the Force Ghost within, completely disregarding her threat. Senya Tirall formed in an astral body like Thexan's, and immediately cast her gaze up her.
"Hello Vaylin."
"Mother!" Vaylin hissed. She immediately tried to summon lightning, but it wouldn't come. Not even a spark.
The former elite Knight of Zakuul offered her advice. "Don't try to use the Force Vaylin, it's very trying during pregnancy, and especially yours. Your body has automatically shut off your conscious command of it so to stop your overexerting yourself and risking your child."
"Go away!"
"I have made many mistakes in my life, my greatest being how I tried to raise you. I was too strict, then too lenient. Don't make my errors, treasure your child in every aspect, don't stifle them, keep them safe. I failed you in all 3 of those respects, I saw your power as a danger, I tried to keep your from using it, and I failed to keep you safe… from everything. You can hate me if you choose, but know that I always have and always will love you Vaylin, no matter what you've done, what you've become."
For some reason, that left the psychotic Empress silent. She didn't know why, but those words brought her some sort of warm feeling, and it wasn't the sadistic pleasure she was so familiar with.
Thexan came to stand alongside Senya. "Peace is born from compassion, knowledge comes from the overcoming of ignorance, harmony is born from chaos, there is no death, there is only the Force. We will go, if that is your wish, but beware the path you walk, for alone you will fall."
Senya returned to her holocron, and Thexan faded from sight, vanishing. Arcann remained however, standing where he did. Slowly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, moving towards him as he stepped back, wrapping the two lightsabers loosely in the Force to prevent her from taking them. She stopped right in front of him, the holocron forgotten for now.
"How are you even still alive? And why emerge now?" She demanded, looking up the head's worth of height difference between them. Her burning eyes contrasted his remorseful blue ones.
He replied with a saddened, penitent tone as he looked down at the ground.
"I had a vision that you lived once more in this time prior to the battle with Father in the Outlander, so I had the Commander freeze me in carbonite. But, before I entered the freeze, Thexan appeared to me and told me he would awaken me when it was time. I have lain dormant all this time for one, singular purpose."
Vaylin stepped closer, barely a foot between them now.
"What is it?"
He didn't answer. Her anger flared and she slapped Arcann across the face with considerable force as she demanded once more the answer she sought. "What?!"
He brought his gaze to bear on her fiery eyes and finally answered in a broken voice.
"To protect you, as I should have before, and failed to. And to that end…"
He sank down on one knee, taking her lightsaber in his hands and presenting it to her, his head bowed. The action seemed to tear up and eviscerate what little pride and self-respect he still possessed, and he finished his declaration.
"... I… will serve you… and your son… until my end of days."