The Light Beckons
author's note: C'mon, we all know that Landy based Lord Vile on Vader. Or, at least, it sure seems it. So, why doesn't there seem to be a fic like this, anywhere?
Don't take it too seriously.
Hey, I might as well publish this, today. After all, I've already got it in doc manager. I'll post a shorter version on The Archive, too.
All things considered, Anakin Skywalker thought that he was having rather a better afterlife than he deserved. He had once been a feared warlord who sustained a cruel empire almost single-handedly before having a change of heart at almost the literal last minute and coming back to his senses, after all. That was, he had to reflect, probably why he hadn't gone on to join his children and other loved ones in The Force.
It was boring, and he'd never been known for his patience. He kept an ear out, and, whenever anyone seemed to be making too much trouble, he readied himself to intervene. Be it extragalactic invaders, overweening would-be siths, aspiring dictators, or those indomitable slavers, Anakin was kept fairly busy with his own galaxy. Enough to consider that his inability to move onto the next plane was not really just a spiteful punishment from his parent, The Force. He was doing good. He was saving lives. Perhaps, someday, he would repay in lives saved the number of lives he'd taken before their time. That day was not today, however. It wasn't even soon.
He was so dedicated to this goal that he was often able to nip problems in the bud. His galaxy entered periods of unmitigated prosperity. Problems farther afield began to tug at him. Places where the Force did not reside, and other methods and rules applied.
Yet, farther afield he went, away from his memories and his triumphs and his failures and his "father", if you could call an impersonal energy that permeated all living things "father".
He wandered, learning how to help without using more than that tenuous bond with the Force that he brought with him wherever he went, just by virtue of what he was. He was content, his heart bent towards the single goal of someday returning to his family. He kept their faces and voices fresh in his mind. He dwelt on them in his weaker moments to give himself the strength to endure. He refused to forget them. He bound himself to the light through them ad bound himself to his own galaxy at the same time. For centuries, their memories kept him sane as he wandered.
And then, he felt something he thought never to feel again: that unique cold darkness as the Dark Side snuffed out hundreds of lives at a time. It drew him like a tractor beam to a little known world in a far off galaxy.
Earth.
War pooled around the edges of a small island (all islands seemed small compared to the entire planets he was used to dealing with). It threatened to leave its confines, to spill over to all the other little countries scattered throughout this same world. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of little states. Anakin had never seen the like.
That tiny island that he would later learn was named Ireland brimmed over with clashing light and dark. It wasn't the Force-it was something a bit different. Long, long ago, as a child, Anakin had been raised on tales of magic and wizards. When he'd left to become a jedi, he'd assumed that those tales were born of a corrupted understanding of jedis and sith and the Force. Now, he was again unsure.
They used not The Force, but magic.
Lord Vile sat deep in meditation, more connected to and aware of the life and magical energies around him than he'd ever been in life. It was not that he appreciated his current state-he missed his body. It had served him well. It had been useful. But, he would never have tapped into his vast talent for necromancy if he hadn't died. His past self would have thought necromancy beneath him.
He was so much stronger, now-almost a godly being, able to snuff out any life he chose with just a thought. He had no desire to be the necromancers' prophesied DeathBringer That would have put an end to the glorious thrills of the waves of death he could create. He was a vehicle of mass slaughter and destruction. It was glorious. It was right.
"Not this again," said a figure, materialising at the edge of his awareness. It blazed brighter than the sun. Lord Vile shrank away from it. It was bright. Perhaps, more accurately, it was brightness. Light.
After a few moments of insufferable brightness that made even his dark tendrils of power retreat into the safety of his armour, Lord Vile's...mental eyes? pierced through the light, and grasped hold of what seemed to be a human male in its early twenties, with curly blond hair and blazing sky blue eyes.
Lord Vile found himself frowning, despite not having the necessary muscles (or any muscles, really). He'd had hair, once upon a time. He sort of missed it, now. Quite suddenly.
It was such an odd, random thing to miss that it almost distracted him. He almost didn't notice that the figure had spoken to him. But Lord Vile would never be that unaware of his surroundings. Beside, he was meditating (he did that instead of sleeping, now). He was always more aware of this meditative otherworld. That didn't change the fact that this figure's words were, for the moment, nonsense.
Lord Vile turned his attention to the newcomer, and tilted his head. "How are you in my head?" he asked, almost plaintive. He rarely spoke in the outside world-talk was pointless when you could just stab people with shadow-tendrils, or suck out their vital energies with an expanding pocket of death. But, here in the heart of his mind, he knew that that wouldn't work. There was no physical form to kill, no energy to steal.
Before he'd become Lord Vile, his old, human self had been quite the chatterbox. There was that, too. Even that part of him seemed so much closer, here.
"Maybe I'm your better self," the newcomer suggested, as if that were expected to be a sufficient response to the question. Lord Vile bristled at the implicit insult to his intelligence. "I'm not really in your mind, you know. You've invaded a universal meditative world. You share it with everyone else who meditates. There just don't seem to be very many people who are willing to do that within several hundred miles of you, so you haven't encountered them before."
Lord Vile was the only person he knew of who meditated. Perhaps that fit. It was still somewhat galling that a random stranger had dared to risk himself by meditating within Lord Vile's sphere of awareness. It was tempting to bring himself out of meditation just to rid himself of the intruder. Whoever that was.
"Do you know whose meditation you're interrupting?" he demanded. "I am Lord Vile, one of Mevolent's three generals, and one of the most feared individuals in his army!"
The other yawned. "'Course, 'course," he said. "You would be 'Lord V-something', wouldn't you? Well, since you're too far gone to listen otherwise-"
Darkness shot out around the figure, obscuring it in a sort of fog of darkness, like black smoke. It left behind a tall figure in armour of solid black, with a long, black cape, and a shiny black mask, blinking lights in the centre of the chest, and a sudden bad case of very heavy, laboured breathing. Each breath the figure took was a harsh, ragged, dragging noise, each identical, measured, neither longer nor shorter, shallower nor deeper, than the last. It was almost hypnotic.
More than that, it was the billowing darkness and that armour that caught Lord Vile's attention. It hid the figure from view-only in his memory did he know the figure to be in truth a glowing, almost saintly, human.
Who was shorter than this suit of armour. Uncertainty edged its way into the corners of his mind. That would not do. He prided himself on always having the answers, and now he wasn't even sure that this masked figure of the death rattle and the previous one made of light and glory were even the same person.
"I am Lord Vader," the figure said, in a deep, dark bass of a voice, the sentence sandwiched between two of its regulated breaths. And somehow, Lord Vile, used to being the biggest fish in the pond (or second biggest, if you put Mevolent first), knew with sudden, painful certainty that, if Vader so chose, he could tear Lord Vile apart, even in this meditative space, and all Vile's necromancy would not save him.
It had been years since he'd felt so weak. (Decades? Centuries?)
"I once served Palpatine, the head of the Galactic Empire. In my day, I destroyed entire civilisations, murdered millions or trillions-I lost count-committed unspeakable crimes, especially against those whom I was meant to protect." He had to take a moment to allow himself to breathe. "I came to my senses. I gave up the power. It was never what I wanted. I don't think it is what you desire, either."
A pause.
"You are lost in the thrill of power, the knowledge that you hold sway over life or death for millions. You have not gone as far as I did. Find your way back, as I did. It is not too late for you."
Lord Vile could somehow believe that this figure had slaughtered untold masses-far more even than he. He could believe that it came from far beyond human awareness, from far beyond known space and time. He could sense its vast power.
What he could not understand was how this man had ever given it up. Nor, indeed, how or why it expected him to.
"Why should I?" he hissed. "With this power, I am unstoppable! As the necromancers hold it, I could be the DeathBringer, who will usher in a time without death! I can kill any who dare oppose me with a thought. Soon, even the one I serve-"
"But, what do you want?" asked Vader. The suit faded around him. Light returned to the world, and shone the brighter where it had before been dark. It hurt to look at him. His voice returned to a softer, almost twangy, higher-pitched thing. "Is power really all you desire from life? You must have been an ordinary man, once. I see it in you. Suffering scarred you, and you turned to power to fill the void-"
A sudden, sharp stabbing pain in the vicinity of Vile's chest. Where his heart had been. The memory of a woman, her wide eyes pleading with him, begging him to save her, but he hadn't the power. Serpine, the third and least of Mevolent's three generals, with his red right hand.
"A wife...and a child," said Vader. "Of course. It would seem that life has only a few scripts that it recycles to the same effect. Your child might still be alive, you know. Mine was."
A flicker of images-a woman in an elaborate dress, then the same woman, hair plastered to her face, as she lay on a bank by a river of lava. A hospital bed, where she screamed in pain, her screams echoed by those of a baby. A half-formed thought of a child, and then a young man with familiarly blond hair and those same keen blue eyes.
"There is still good in you," he said.
Lord Vile recoiled as if stricken. How dared this Vader to show him such things? Besides, that desire for family, that love and affection, belonged to another man, another lifetime.
"I'm quite sure the child is dead," Lord Vile hissed. "He killed them both in front of-" Me. Him. Us?
"She believed in your goodness, even though you doubted yourself," Vader said with confidence. "It's there, even if you don't believe in it. Your child would believe, too. They wouldn't want you to pursue this path. They'd want you to choose the light. You do not require this armour to keep you alive, unlike me. Remove it, and return to those who love you. Fight for the cause in which you truly believe. Learn from my mistakes."
Vader spread his hands out towards Lord Vile, like a figure from a religious painting. A metaphorical embrace, the acceptance of the good and evil within.
"They would never forgive me. I have destroyed that old life completely."
"Once, I thought the same," Vader said, with a smile. "Do I seem like a Dark Lord to you, now?"
No. Lord Vile had seen the darkness in the man before him. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have believed in its reality.
"You have a war to fight. Fight for your friends. It will help to earn their trust again. Someday, perhaps, we will both do enough good to make up for the harm we have caused. But, before you can atone, you must first turn aside from your path."
Vile hesitated, and then removed the helmet of his armour. The darkness around it peeled away. The tendrils writhed under the protection afforded by the remaining parts of his armour. They tried to hide from that blistering light of Vader's.
"I am a skeleton," he pointed out.
"I noticed," Vader said, seeming mildly intrigued. Perhaps he'd seen weirder, in his time.
"I doubt there are many who would trust me."
Whom was he trying to convince?
"Your friends will," Vader promised. "If you give them the chance. Think of your friends."
His mind turned to thoughts of his wife and child, first. They were not Lord Vile's to claim. Then he thought of the Dead Men. He realised, with a shock, that he'd been fighting on the opposite side of the war. Vader had a point, there.
This accidental recollection seemed to hurt his necromancer shadow-tendrils. They seeped out from around his armour, and as they did, he found himself removing it, piece by piece, as if to rediscover who he was, what might lie beneath.
Vader smiled, and vanished.
And Skulduggery Pleasant woke up in the middle of a battlefield. There had been no survivors. But he was used to war. He stood there, surrounded by death, and began to remove Lord Vile's armour.