"What could I do,
But follow straight, invisibly thus led?"

- John Milton, Paradise Lost


CHAPTER 64

There are doors we do not open. There are places we do not look.
(Something inside me has always been there.)

There are things we choose to forget—
(...and now it's awake. And I'm afraid.)

And should not be brought to light.

There are wounds inside that have never healed. Truths she has always known:

Be good, and they will come back.
Be better, and they will love more.
Bury yourself with no mind to remember,
With every intent to forget.

Conceal yourself and make something better. (Someone better.) Mark your days with waiting; a scratch for every part erased. Patiently and with a smile. Don't show the violent part. The one that hurts—the one that yearns. The creature that lives under your skin.

She has fought for so long and hidden it so well. The greed, the terrifying need for love. The part that could scream and would never stop screaming. The pit in her soul without end.

But now, it is truly awake. It hungers, and she will not stop it. It yearns, and she will feed it. There is no point in resisting. She has been doomed from the start.

Soft words fall on her ears. A male voice (another one), a would-be suitor to make it all better, to save her, to make her who she was meant to be. Tiresome droning, endless lectures. It is always about becoming, about transformation (because she is never good enough as she is).

Another voice pleading, hands touching her face. She lashes out, pushes everything away. An echo of something goes with it, something kinder, something once good. But there is nothing good, she thinks; how could there be?

What do you want? the first voice whispers; the suitor. Tell me.

She seethes. What every sentient creature wants, you tiresome fool. To suffer no more.

Soft words and touches; she can feel her power siphoned but she does not care; there is plenty more. Pain wraps around her and it is pure and clean and it does not lie, has never lied to her. Her constant companion, her only friend. It has never seen sunlight until now.

She inhales, and rocks shatter. Exhales, and the tree of her hunger stretches all the way to the sky. A shuddering breath and she can hear millions of voices drawn close to the earth. Shouting followed by silence. Why won't anyone stay with me? Why must everyone leave?

The thing inside her shushes these thoughts. It purrs with warmth. Blinks with golden-tinted vision. There is nothing left of her but the creature. She sees that now. Fragments of her old life lie scattered around her, like the droplets of pigment gone from her eyes. Friends. Belonging. Someone who loved her—who loves her still. Hush, the creature tells her. None of it was real.

You're right, she thinks. You always are. She is tired of running from the truth: they will always leave her. What doesn't leave, she will destroy.

What now? she asks the purring beast. Shall we go into the silence as well? It would be so restful, the black mouth of oblivion. This is where she was meant to be.

The beast stirs, affronted and annoyed. Cease? she says. Oh no. Not we. You and I are meant for better things. We shall bow to no one, and beg for no more mercy. The creature senses her disquiet and soothes her with kind arms, shushing her whimpers and wrapping corded bands tightly about her heart.

We shall not fall into Darkness, dear one. You and I have a far greater purpose.

We shall become the Light.


It is not easy to see from inside a stormtrooper's helmet.

Walking is not much better. Elsa's shoulder keeps bumping into Poe's, their movements clumsy as they trail behind a nine-strong patrol through the labyrinthine corridors of Hux's flagship. They are somewhere midlevel, still far away from the main control deck and the most likely place Hux will be. Nevertheless, some useful intelligence has been gleaned. They contacted Finn once they had stowed themselves away and he corroborated the schematics Elsa already knew and added usual rotations and shift patterns of the low level soldiers. There was also what they learned directly from Hux.

It was the first time Elsa had seen him in the flesh since leaving him drugged and naked on his bed. Pompous as always but now overdressed, he emerged from the largest of many small landing vessels and led an angry procession into the main palace on Theed. She heard his voice not long after as she and Poe lay in hiding, both scrabbling to change into their stolen stormtrooper outfits. Needing to leave no trace, they had killed the two young men and disposed of the bodies. Killing still felt new but she understood its necessity if they were to win the war. Hux had far fewer compunctions, demanding the swift execution of some Naboo officers who had supposedly failed him. It included the hapless captain who communicated Ben's message. Elsa closed her eyes and hoped that his death was swift. She regretted not killing him herself. She felt a sickening kinship with the Supreme Leader, who bellowed his next orders as more bodies fell and Elsa made her silent prayer:

The fleet was heading to Moraband.

They are in hyperspace now, maybe still one or two hours away. People seem on edge but that makes them distracted. No one pays any mind to the inept pair of troopers struggling to keep pace with their group.

"What's the plan, Blue?" Poe whispers.

She has no idea. They were supposed to save the Emperor and bring him back to his mother. Save the Empress as well. What they knew and thought they understood has been upended. The Knights of Ren under the shadow leadership of Alec Magess are the real ones in power. The Empress is their tool. And the Emperor? He was on Naboo and now he is leading them to some other place, a planet she has never heard of. Poe knows nothing of it either. They are guided by Ben Solo's voice in the Force, a voice that spoke in the body of another. Such power is too much, too strange to be believed, but she is often shown glimpses in the soft touches of her son, in the memories of another.

This is where they must go.

She opens her mouth to speak, her vision partially obscured, reduced down to a narrow channel. The visors do not allow for peripheral vision. Face straight ahead. Keep going. Look at what's in front of you.

Now Elsa sees it.

A young woman is being dragged between two large imposing officers. She struggles feebly. She is dressed in the flimsy gauze and fine chainmail of a dancing girl, like one of Elsa's father's. Slavery was outlawed under the last Republic, including on Gatalenta, but living beings could still be acquired and bought like everything else. Under the First Order, they once more became acceptable commodities, and now the trafficking of peoples is one of the biggest industries in the galaxy, second only to the arms trade.

"I cannot endure it," the Empress had once said on the topic. I cannot endure it either, Elsa thought back then and thinks in this moment, tired of a life held in the power of others.

The girl is pulled left down another corridor and Elsa takes her chance, falling back from the patrol and whispering to Poe, "Follow me."

The corridor they turn down (still awkwardly) is less occupied than the previous. They are moving away from where the higher ups must be, but this is better; it is important.

"Care to share what we're doing?" Poe says, his voice an urgent hiss.

"Keep following."

They do. The officers stop outside a nondescript door and open it. The girl is shoved in. The officers turn and walk back, past Elsa and Poe, who stop and straighten, readjusting their blasters in an unsynchronized salute. Elsa holds her breath. She hears Poe release his once the officers are gone.

Looking around, they are alone now. She runs to the door and finds it needs a special code in order to be opened.

"Did you see what they typed?" she says and Poe shakes his head. Elsa raises her blaster and fires. The keypad panel sparks and Poe flinches, looking hurriedly around as Elsa fires again then rams the butt of her gun against metal, pounding and pounding until the door finally groans and shifts.

"Subtle," Poe says.

Elsa grins from behind her mask. But when she steps inside, her dark amusement is gone.

The room is filled with young women and girls, all beautiful, all different races and species but in similar states of undress, forced to wear demeaning scraps of material that expose most of their flesh. They sit amongst a sea of decorative pillows and mats and day beds spread across the floor and beneath a sky formed by rich tapestries that hang from the ceiling, the style reminiscent of a Hutt harem tent.

The women look scared. Elsa feels sickened. Despite her mask, she can see more clearly than ever what it is she must do.

She rips off the helmet and the entire room comes into focus. Voices gasp. Eyes bulge and widen. She hears Poe stumble in behind her as he takes in the scene. The girl who had just been returned blinks from her huddled position in the corner and exclaims, "Aren't you too pretty to be a stormtrooper?"

"I'm not a stormtrooper," Elsa says and throws her gun and helmet to the ground. "My name's Isolde, Commander of the Resistance, and I'm here to rescue you."


If Hux has learned anything about power, it is that it is fleeting. It can always be taken. It is nebulous and poorly defined and held like clay, constantly molded into the shape desired by the wielder. But power is not always clay. It can be durasteel or Wayland marble, something too hard to break and make into one's own.

His father was not a great sculptor. Supreme Leader Snoke was an artistic master, and the former Emperor was an idiot. Fuck the clay. What is he thinking about?

He paces about his quarters. Magess is still MIA with his merry band of magical miscreants and the most important of all, that peasant empress freak. Her body held no appeal but he understands her power. Alec is a child; he scrunches up clay until it distorts and spreads, bursting soft between his fingers. He could not make the lowly scavenger into what he wanted. Yet a woman's body can be molded more than anything else. Hux knows. Yes, he knows this. The mark of any master is the thousands of hours spent in practice.

They are not long for the planet of Moraband. He felt the nervous glances of his officers on the bridge, the plotting eyes of others, ready to swipe this disintegrating rug from beneath his feet. He has worked too long and too hard; this title belongs to him. The galaxy is his right, his grateful child. He shall remake it in his image.

He is bored.

It's so fucking empty, being in power. There is no one to lord it over, no princess to accept her place on her knees by his side. He feels himself teetering on the edge, ready to fall and lose, and he so hates to lose when the universe should be firm in his hold, not thrown to the winds and tampered with at the whim of all these damned stupid sorcerers.

The buzzer sounds at the entrance. Was his next distraction due so soon? He cannot remember, has forgotten the face of the last. Still, he goes and answers the call. A monitor shows him two guards and his next victim. Who is this girl?

"You may enter," he drawls. The officers do, a tall and exceedingly beautiful specimen standing proud between them. Her hair is dark with flecks of silver, straight and cut into a sharp bob that ends just below her chin. Her eyes are a defiant pink. Her skin is a strange washed out gray. Her body is…

Well, her body is just perfect. Hux decides to let himself enjoy it. He silently gestures for the guards to leave then takes a turn, takes a tour about her. He takes his sweet kriffing time. Yes.

"Where are you from?" he says.

"My Lord?"

Her voice is clear and sharp, melodic with the sounds of good breeding. Her outfit consists of thin gold chains hanging from her chest and hips and nowhere else, fit for a common whore. An exquisite contrast. Yes.

"What planet?"

"I don't remember," she says as he studies the round globes of her breasts, the narrow tapering of her waist and smooth flatness of her stomach.

"How?"

"I did not grow up where I was born."

He bends down to inspect her behind, traces a chain with the tip of his finger. "What of your parents?"

"Gone."

She smells like flowers and sweat, like the depths of a dark forest. "Do you know what you are?" he asks rhetorically, straightening up to finish his tour.

Hux comes to a stop in front of her and she holds his gaze, unafraid. How moronically defiant. Yes. It is decided; he is clear. She is made to be broken.

"I know who I am," she says. "Do you know who you are?"

He slaps her across the face with the back of his hand. She licks her bloodied lip as her head twists back from the side. She smiles.

"Know your place," he sneers.

"Show me then."

He is becoming hard. He would crawl and let her spit on him. He would defile himself for the pleasure, lower himself onto his belly, dirty and grovelling and wrong. Make him the clay. Let her mold him. Oh, how the princess had quivered and he had seen himself like an insect reflected in the glass of a jar.

I will not make the same mistake again, he thinks. It is too late. Time is running out. There will be no time left.

How he hates Magess. Blames the Emperor. Sees himself as disease and cure to all that ails the galaxy.

He does not move. The woman goes to him, claws her nails through his hair, presses her bloodied lips to his. The taste of metal and he moans. Mouth open, he crushes her perfect body to his. It has never been like this. Always in control, always pretending with the heady need to be the one to crush, not be broken. He holds her close. Her flesh is soft and smooth and he rubs himself against her. Grips her bare buttocks like ripened fruit. Lifts her as she wraps her indecently long legs around him and carries her to his bedroom.

He throws her on the bed. She hooks her legs back around him, twisting their bodies until she is on top, straddling his chest and looking down on him. Her knees dig into arms, painful in their pressure as bony sharp points. Her cunt is hot against him. He is so fucking hard.

"Let me tie you to the bed," she begs, her mouth leaving a trail of hot kisses to his neck, her hands ripping open his shirt.

Yes.

He nods. There are manacles already hanging from the bedposts. Never on himself but there had never been anyone to make him want to do this yet. The princess. She could have broken him. He would have broken her first, but if she were his, he would have laid down and licked the soles of her feet. Wretched creature that he is. He hungers for the clay and is the clay and she can mold him.

Yes.

His hands are restrained. His chest is exposed. He has not been scratched since that day, drugged and helpless and a fool. She scratches him now. He hisses and he squirms.

"Don't mark me again."

The woman leans down. A delicate pendant hangs from around her neck and trails along his skin as her breath merges with his.

"Why don't you recognize me?" She scratches again.

"Get off me!"

She slaps him across the mouth and smiles. "Long time no see." He looks again.

No.

Oh gods. He's going to come. He's going to scream and cry like the snivelling child that his father hated.

"Did you miss me?" the princess says.

A knife appears in her hand. She clings to her pendant in the other. "My stepmother Amilyn sends her regards."

Hux closes his eyes. Clay can be cut as well as be molded. He should know. He lets her make him as she wants to then—

The room spins. Her body clings, then slumps against him. Hux looks up at a pale metal ceiling and a voice cries loud inside and outside his head.

COME FOR ME.

Oh gods, he does.

YOUR FATE AWAITS.

I am ready. Yes.

COME TO ME AND NEVER LEAVE AGAIN. WHAT YOU WANT IS RIGHT HERE ON MORABAND.


"So what's the plan?"

Malaak is wearing every weapon that will fit over and in his tattered tunic and combat pants, a variety of blasters dangling from his belt like a collection of dead ermine. If he had hair, there would probably be daggers braided into it.

Idiot, Alec thinks, but the rest don't look much better. They are all now armed to the teeth with the conventional non-Force user weaponry that Ben and Malaak brought with them from Naboo. As usual, Pular opted for the daggers and Ersn the long-ranged shooters. Vadanav found a retractable spear reminiscent of his now mourned vibro-ax and Alec himself has two blasters and a metal blade the size of an overgrown machete. All of their sabers save for Ben's have been lost to the jungle of the main tomb; a summon's call away via the Force but Ben forbade it, not willing to risk alerting Bane to their presence.

Speaking of which, their newly reconciled and erstwhile dead leader stands perfectly still, his eyes closed and scanning, Alec assumes, for whatever Force signatures he can find.

"I need to get close to her," Ben says, eyes still shut. "I need the rest of you to take care of Bane."

"Take care of Bane?" Vanadav says, once the least vocal but now it seems always the first to give voice to what everyone else is thinking. "Why not something a little more challenging? Malaak could write us a sonnet—"

Ben holds up a hand for silence, but the pale knight isn't wrong. It's not just Bane strength that's the problem, Alec thinks, but the power he holds over this place, if not the whole planet.

"What kind of power?" Ben says, his eyes suddenly shooting open and fixing on Alec.

"That's a damn alarming habit," Alec mutters, and this earns the rare hint of a smile from his dark-haired brother. "His life force, it's tied to this place," he goes on to explain. "What's left of it, that is. And the things that have died here…"

"He has bonded to those as well?"

"Transfer essence," Pular says, still serene and dead and almost as big of a Force geek as the Emperor himself.

"Okay." Ben nods. "So let's assume he can control the dead."

"Can't you kill them?" Malaak asks. "This unnatural power you have. Can't you…" he gestures vaguely with his beloved plasma gun, having kissed and caressed it rather alarmingly when he found it at the bottom of the weapons' bag.

"If you get me close enough," Ben says, "I can free them. But first—"

His words are lost with the sound of an earthquake, a loud and growing rumble, which peaks as a deafening roar. The ground shifts under their feet. And something else, something more insidious filters through the atmosphere. An energy. A voice. Terrible and compelling.

COME TO ME.

BOW. GET ON YOUR KNEES.

THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO FIGHT. DROWN IN YOUR DESPAIR.

Alec doubles over as if punched. The air leaves his lungs, the will to live begins to drain out like a bloodless wound. His brother-knights are faring no better. Ersn and Vadanav cling to each other, while Malaak staggers and the reanimated form of Pular slows, drawn towards the source of the voice.

Ben looks shaken as well.

"I think your wife wants a word," Alec croaks. The feeble quip exhausts his energy to the point of nearly passing out. A strong hand clamps down on his shoulder, forcing him to stay upright, and he finds himself staring into a pair of familiar eyes.

"Cloak us," Ben urges, a great deal of effort behind each word. The hand on Alec's shoulder grips harder, and his strength begins to return. Alec understands now. Ben's power somehow counteracts hers. He wonders who is the stronger, but there is no time; his brothers are tripping over themselves to obey the Empress and all exit together through the antechamber's narrow door.

"Cloak," Ben says again, his voice straining.

Yes, Alec thinks. Yes. I remember. He draws off Ben's power to reach down and locate his own. A hunter's skill, the gift of an assassin. Of invisibility and stealth. He once hid the entire royal court on Naboo. Half of the First Order's fleet. He remembers now. He lets his power expand out from his body and encompass every person in the room, working to form an unseen barrier around them. He can feel when it fully envelopes Ben because that Dark and unspeakable power of his brother's flows into him exponentially. Alec could cloak the planet now, he thinks, but instead he focuses on stabilizing and sealing the edges around his brothers so each man can move separately should they need to.

When it is done, Ben lets him go. "Thank you." He claps Alec on the back like he wasn't struggling to stand only moments before. "Remember this, brother. No one has ever done what you just did."

"The fuck was that?" Malaak pants, gripping the chamber's entrance with white knuckles.

"Our Lady Empress' power," Alec says, his own voice feeling rusty for what reason he will never say. "I forget that you've never had the pleasure of experiencing it."

"She's getting stronger," Pular observes. "It's never felt like that before."

It's this place, Ersn wordlessly supplies. Bane is helping her.

"What do we do?" Vadanav says, and the question is addressed to Ben. There is no sarcasm now, only genuine concern.

Ben holds up a hand again; he is sifting through the Force. Alec sifts too, reaching out to follow the broadcast of Rey's call. He clears his mind in the old Jedi way Luke taught them, and he can almost see it—fingers reaching out across the galaxy, luring ships with a seductive voice. Whole fleets. A vast armada. It is the power of battle meditation in action and he has never felt anything like before. Her fingers spread wide and touch many, yet, in amongst them all, he can sense the individual signatures he knows. Hux and Kirss and Mitaka are on their way, the full strength of the empire forced to obey and follow with them. And there are others too, ones Alec only knows in passing: the beautiful princess Isolde, the irritating pilot Dameron, the fragile face of Ben's mother, that former stormtrooper that Rey had called her friend. Every single person that they command—the First Order and now the Resistance too—they heed this siren's song. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of living beings.

All of them are heading this way.

"Mother," Ben whispers, his eyes once more closed, and Alec knows what it is he is doing. Two Force-sentient creatures may communicate over long distance, but those bound by blood can cross the galaxy itself. Ben is trying to reach her. He is trying to turn her back, but the pull is too strong and Alec cannot shield those who are light years away. Ben breaks the telepathic link and, for the first time, Alec sees fear cloud his face.

"You have to get me near her," Ben says again. "I can stop this."

"We have to get past Bane first," Ersn reminds him, still adjusting from Rey's onslaught and thus having to speak out loud.

"Shall I detonate the charges, my Lord?" Malaak looks fully recovered. So much for call-me-Ben, Alec thinks. Old habits die hard.

"What charges?" says Vadanav.

"Yes," Ben nods to the tattooed lump of a man. "Go." Malaak disappears out the narrow doorway. "For the ground canons," he explains and shares wordlessly with everyone else how they were set up when he and Malaak arrived. "I won't let the Empire intervene," he says, meaning he will stop them firing on anyone else who shows up (namely the Resistance and his mother). Clever, Alec thinks, but then he remembers who he's dealing with.

"Do you have any more explosives?" Alec asks. "If she keeps going like this, we might need to seal the tomb."

"Do you really think that would stop her?" Ersn says, and Pular opens his mouth to agree. "She already split the place in two—"

"The lower levels," Alec cuts them both off. An idea is forming. Insane, yes, but right now clinging to sanity is unlikely to save them. "Ben, don't you remember?"

It is the first time Alec has called him by this name since the fall of Luke's temple. Ben Solo blinks at the sound. His eyes shift and in the span of a single second he looks impossibly young, carries the wisdom of ancients. Alec can swear he can see his brain working everything out.

"The execution chamber?" he says, in half excitement and half dread. "That place is real?"

"It's where Bane tortured me," Alec says, sharing with him memories he has never shared before. The place he gave up his doomed soul on a fool's quest, at behest of an emperor's desperate call. Where the Sith executed their Jedi enemies for revenge. For sport. Over the ages, thousands had died there and no one could hear their cries for help, their screams of pain. Blood soaked the floors and tar lined the walls, a strange and legendary substance that insulated the rest of the planet from the echoes of the Force so no power, Light nor Dark, could ever hope to get out.

"If we can seal it…" Alec says, willing his brother to understand.

A flurry of emotions flicker across Ben's face, like colors glimpsed in the crystal of Palpatine's throne room. He does the math and then does it again. Alec can sense the objections—hundreds of them—but then Ben sees the wisdom of it. The inevitability. At last, he speaks.

"Malaak can get you the charges. Set the timer for twenty minutes."

Vadanv waves a blaster impatiently. "Can someone tell me what the kriff is—?"

"I'll explain on the way," Ersn says, already privy to the silent conversation. He grabs his lover's hand, dark and pale fingers threading together. "You've going to love this," he promises, Vadanav grunting his reluctant consent as he follows. May the Force be with you, Ersn tells the rest as the two disappear after Malaak; Alec wonders if he will ever see them again.

"That just leaves Bane," Pular says.

"Yeah, just Bane." Alec grins at Ben, throwing an arm around the dead boy's shoulders. "Three against one should be—"

His words are drowned out by a disturbance in the ground. Another earthquake? he wonders but then the stone breaks, large paving slabs cracking and shifting upwards, dislodging thick dust as a cloud. Through the cracks Alec can see a hand emerge, not so much a hand but bones and withered skin. The hand becomes an arm. The arm is attached to a torso wrapped in tattered rags. The torso crawls. It has a face; the face is a skull with a mask of rotting flesh and larvae-filled hollows for eyes.

Not again, Alec thinks. "Is that a—?"

"Jedi," Ben says. "Old Republic era if what's left of the clothes are anything to go by."

"You're the fucking worst," Alec groans.

"Fascinating," Pular says, watching as the torso drags itself out. With one and a half legs still attached, it begins to crawl, screaming like a rathtar until its jaw drops from its hinges and it vomits worms and maggots to the floor. "I take it back! They're kriffing disgusting!"

Alec laughs as Pular skitters away like a scared child. "You're one to talk," he says, and Pular makes an obscene gesture he could only have learned from Malaak.

Ben does not move as the Jedi, or what's left of him, reaches his feet and grabs hold of his boot. Skeletal arms claw up his legs. Alec takes aim, ready to blow the rotting corpse away when Ben reaches out instead and places his palm on top of the maggot-filled skull.

"Sleep," he says, and the corpse disintegrates into dust. He rubs his hand on his thigh, unaware of Alec and Pular staring. "Five thousand years that poor Jedi had waited."

"Five thousand?" Pular repeats.

"Then there are at least five thousand years' worth of corpses," Alec says. "Not to mention a dozen Sith lords."

More dead Jedi start emerging from the site of the first, while the walls and floor fracture as fresh vines sprout and break through. Vines and corpses alike reaching out as grasping hands; Ben slashes with his newly healed saber and Alec and Pular shoot at what they can.

"Don't forget the sentient flora," Pular says, blasting the head off one body and crushing another beneath his foot.

Alec rips a vine from his throat, using his machete to cut through several others. "I'd say the odds of us making it out of this are—"

Ben blows the walls apart with the Force. He holds out his hands and most of the zombies drop and return to dust. Every vine dies as it touches him. He pulls out a blaster and shoots another behind him without looking.

"Never tell me the odds," he says.

"Jedi zombies," Pular mumbles, still in awe. There are corpses now crawling along the ceiling.

"So what's the plan?" Alec asks again. There's an earnestness to his voice that wasn't there before. The dust is settling all around and he can see a forest that leads to the heart of the temple.

Ben is looking that way as well as he holsters his blaster. "Disable the living. Destroy the dead," he says, holding out a hand. Alec and Luke's lost lightsabers are summoned through thick foliage and crumbling walls into his waiting palm. "I'll take care of the rest."

Alec tosses the machete aside as he catches his red blade and Pular accepts the green one of Luke's. They stare at their brother, more in awe of him now than the chaos all around, yet Ben only shrugs. "Pretty sure Bane already knows that we're here."

With a wordless nod between the three, they all ignite their sabers. Ben parts the forest and breaks down more walls, and they can see an army of zombies approaching, vines growing, rocks falling. A planet crumbling apart, a galaxy drawn into war, an immortal Sith Lord hellbent on destruction and one woman, abandoned and pregnant and lost to her rage, somewhere in the heart of it all.

Bad odds, shit plan, zero chance of survival, Alec thinks.

"Just like old times." Ben smiles and runs into the fray.