Chapter 13

"My Queen, your sister had been exiled, as is tradition." Reported a servant.

"Good. Leave me here. I am not to be disturbed while I recuperate." Sil panted heavily and had to rely on a wall for support. The duel with her sister had taken a heavy toll on the woman's energy reserves and strength. She brought her hand up to her mouth as a coughing fit sent blood spewing from her nose and mouth.

"Your Majesty, are you okay?" The servant inquired.

"Yes, now go!" Sil lied and paced off into a darker region of the basement. Exhausted to the core, Sil collapsed against a barrel and closed her eyes. Without blood, her recuperation would be slow, but she, as Queen Mother, could not drain the boy she sent away.

Before eyelids could fully cover Sil's dull, gray eyes, Sil found herself in a place she had not seen in at least a thousand years.

Flashback

"Kyril!" An eighteen-year-old, still human Sil shrieked as she forced open the double doors that led to one of the many conference rooms in Fountain Palace. The room was devoid of life, save a few decorative plants and a body that half leaned against a chair. Sil's worst nightmares about the disturbance she felt in the Force were confirmed. The one man who had ever managed to provoke some strange, special feeling from her was assassinated, judging from the knife hilt that protruded from his bleeding throat.

Ignoring the furniture in her path, Sil rushed to the man's side and dropped to her knees to reach him. Kyril of House Ceraith weakly turned toward his lady-to-be and grinned slightly. When he budged his wrist somewhat in an attempt to stroke Sil's cheek, the ex-Jedi grabbed his hand and stopped it.

"Don't try move. Here, let me take that." Sil dropped to her knees and carefully removed the double-edged weapon from the young man's throat. The man's lips moved and blood gurgled from his throat before streaming from the corners of his mouth. The golden lighting of the palace betrayed none of the woman's emotions and mood.

"Please, don't talk. For the angels' sakes, stay with me!" A tear streamed down Sil's face and a group of forgotten emotions welled up in the woman, threatening to burst her body at any moment. With a shaking hand, Sil placed the knife atop a table and cradled Kyril's head in an attempt to move him. Meanwhile, with her free hand, she stroked his pallid cheek.

Fresh, crimson blood streamed from the man's nostrils as he exhaled his increasingly labored breaths.

"Damn you! Don't leave! I'll get back whoever did this to you; they won't live to see tomorrow, I swear by the Force!" Sil desperately swore and shook the handsome, dying man in her arm. A river of tears mingled with the fresh blood on the mosaic floor as pale, cream-colored lids permanently fell over the man's emerald-green eyes.

"NO!" Sil screamed in rage when she felt Kyril's death through the Force. Her fist pounded against a table and everything on the polished tabletop jumped in response. She then collapsed into a sobbing heap on the man's chest.

When there were no more tears to shed, Sil picked herself up and drew out her lightsaber stud. With one move of her thumb, a deadly, silver saber hummed to life. Her eyes were no longer dull but rather, deadly and venomous to the point where staring her in the eye could mean instant death. She knew only one group who could have a motive to kill her Kyril and every last one of them that she could find would die for her man's death.

Lady Ceraith, Kyril's older sister, had complained about owing a debt to the impatient Ni'Korish party leaders and it was common knowledge that the anti-Jedi group was meeting in the Great Circle at the edge of the city. Sil tapped into the Force and confirmed her suspicions.

The princess wasted no time in rushing into the meeting place. She knew she had spent too many hours weeping for her lost Kyril, for the sun had set by the time she was out.

"Princess, I believe you are not an official member of this party." One man turned and sarcastically stated.

"No, but I do owe this party a debt of life." Sil's posture, stance, and low growl were menacing. Before anyone could respond, Sil continued. "You have murdered a man who is to be prince and I, by my authority as Kyril House Ceraith's princess, will carry out your sentences by my own hand!"

She brought her lightsaber down into the shoulder of the nearest man and then with a push, she chopped the man in two. In a fluid, continued motion too fast for the naked eye to follow, Sil reduced ten more people to mere body parts. Her blood boiled, and for the moment, there was only her, the Force, and the wrath that she was all too familiar with. She spun in angry circles and wove ribbons of deadly light as she slaughtered by the dozens. The angry beat of her dance had found harmony with her Skywalker blood.

One man approached Sil with a blaster and the Jedi, without thinking, slashed through the man's wrists and watched the pain and shock in his eyes with pleasure. She then drove her lightsaber through his chest and mercilessly kicked his throat. Sil swung her lightsaber in a circle around her body and pivoted on her left foot, cutting half a dozen politicians in half. When pieces of human flesh toppled toward the former Jedi, she merely glanced and sent the pieces back to the ground with a single wave of her hand.

Shocked members of the Ni'Korish party screamed and scrambled for safety, but their efforts were futile. Sil had sworn that every last one of them would pay, and she meant every last one. With one massive Force-tug, she dragged every fleeing person back into the circle that she had transformed into a slaughterhouse.

"Princess, you're mad!" Someone screamed. In response, Sil merely grinned and used the Force to tear the speaker to bloody shreds. The woman did not even as much as pause until every last being that bothered to attend the meeting was reduced to ribbons of smoking, bleeding flesh on the grassy floor.

Despite Sil's Jedi upbringing, she found exacting the ultimate revenge to be oddly pleasant and addicting.

In the darkness of the night, a lone figure stood amidst the sprawling carnage in the light of the Hapan moons. A white saber waved in the reflected light as if it was the scepter of the famed angel of death from Hapan mythology. The incarnadine color of the blood from the bodies was reflected in the figure's normally steely eyes, as befitting her wrathful mood. Without the thoroughly feminine face and body, the woman was an exact copy of a young version of her most powerful ancestor, Anakin Skywalker.

The black-clad woman examined the adversaries whom she slew, hoping to find peace after her stormy rampage. Those political enemies who murdered her love had been slaughtered like the animals they were on the inside, but the killer could find no peace. The torment of losing the only man she had dared to love only grew stronger as she scanned the men who were unfortunate enough to be tortured before their deaths.

In an attempt to pacify her mind, Sil took out her remaining rage on her enemies by shredding their remains with her hands, but there still no satisfaction. The bodies in her immediate vicinity were reduced to bloody, smoking pulps of flesh the size of fists, yet still, anger boiled Sil's blood. Even after she repeated the process with every bit of flesh she could find in the slaughterhouse, she found neither piece nor quiet.

The woman thought she would be satisfied with her work, but instead, every ounce of pain she had inflicted had been reflected back at her and permanently tormenting her shattered heart. Shattered dreams and hopes seemed to rise from the dead bodies' nostrils and pelt her with arrows designed for the sole purpose of shattering one's mind. Even the face of the man she loved rose from the earth and screeched insults at the woman.

"Kyril, please! It's me! You're hurting me!" The woman half screamed and half pleaded as tears and sweat rolled down her flawless skin. Knees dropped to the grassy floor as the woman's two hands each gouged out a fistful of blood soaked dirt from the wet soil beneath the dead bodies. "Kyril, my dear, you truly don't mean what you said, do you? Ahh, why?"

The woman emptied one of her hands and punched the mixture of blood, water, microscopic animals, and roots beneath the carnage as teardrops landed on the back of the hand.