Part 2

Into the Shadow and the Void

Prologue

Loss... Anguish... Passion... Hatred... these things drove the Dark Side, these things drove the Sith. Morgana, a rogue Sorceress of the Dark Side had known these things since her own training had begun under the Sith Lord Darth Inferis. Called a madman, Inferis had preached that the true Sith should be only one Master and one apprentice but with a host of assassins trained well enough to take the place of the apprentice if they fell. Expendable servants who, when they served their purpose, could be easily disposed of without eliminating the Sith Order. And with each apprentice taking the mantle from the Master, he'd recommended that the top twenty assassins fight each other until only one emerged to become the next apprentice.

Initially, he was written off as a madman, a Bith Force-sensitive who'd delved too far into sadism and cruelty in order to avoid falling into the traps inherent to his species. But when he had actually attempted this in choosing nearly fifty candidates for the apprenticeship, the Council acted. Not wishing to part with the scientific insights he afforded them as a Bith but not wishing his dissent to spread until the Emperor had to act, he was exiled from Dromund Kaas by their decree. Banished to Taris, he was allowed to scoop up as many Force adepts as he could find, provided he didn't harvest from the pools at Korriban, Dathomir, or any other Academy. Originally, Morgana had been one such adept he chose for his own purposes but when she emerged even more powerful than the apprentice he had thought he'd have, he took her in.

Training her in the ways of the Dark Side, her training (and his usefulness) had been complete when her sister had committed suicide. A rape victim of fellow rogue Sith, Hyperion Algethii, the woman had been forced by their parents to carry the child into being. Then, when she had surrendered custody to their mother and father, she'd jumped two thousand feet to her death. Her death marked the end of everything Morgana ever had and as such, provided her the necessary anguish and strife to complete her training with Lord Inferis and kill him. But even as she slew him, she agreed with his principles, believing the Council had exiled him because he was right about the nature of the Dark Side but wanted to silence him politically.

In time, she liquidated nearly all her Master's estate for the necessary credits and seen to it that the assassins he would've kept had killed themselves. Then she started a new life, pursuing Hyperion to the ends of the galaxy in her search for revenge against him. She had thought of giving up, believing she had found an apprentice in Seth al Ugolio despite the near-disaster in choosing Li Whitewolf as her initial choice. But when reports came that he had been killed, she could think of only two or three people who would not only defeat Seth but would also kill him.

Two of them were Jedi who would have tried their best to capture him first, especially Hyperion's brother Dantius. But the brutality of Seth's murder, combined with the reports and the fact that his lightsaber was missing, told her who had killed him. She knew Hyperion still existed, still lived, still roamed the galaxy while she was cluelessly searching for him! But now, at the cost of her apprentice, she knew that the trail was growing hot once again. "He was living on Ando Prime, in a shack he made by hand with a boy that is now gone. But this time, he had the help of the Nautolan who also had to fight off a Jedi who went rogue in trying to find him," said a soldier who'd brought Seth's body to her.

It made sense, seeing as Morgana had followed the reports of a rogue Force adept being chased by the Brothers Bane of Dromund Kaas and Dantius' former Padawan, Polydeuces. The fact that Inoy had associated himself with Hyperion before had also been nothing new, even before the death of Polydeuces and Seth. So she knew now that they were hot on Hyperion's trail, his stagnation on Ando Prime allowing her to catch up and take her revenge. I am close, Hyperion. So close to avenging my sister and taking back what is mine by right Morgana declared silently.

"Keep an eye on him, if there is any way you can keep a homing beacon on him, do it. I don't want him to escape me after all these years," Morgana had ordered. The soldiers went about obeying her demands, making sure that Hyperion wouldn't escape their sight. But of course, Morgana knew that if Hyperion was still as cunning as ever, he would try to defend himself. In so doing, he would prompt her to emerge and destroy him herself and that was exactly what she intended to do.

She already learned what Hyperion possessed in the way of arsenal and Force powers while she was at it. The Sith Witch knew that Hyperion wielded thermal detonators, vibroaxes, vibroknives, nets, shields, and blaster pistols in addition to two lightsabers. One of them, they learned, had belonged to Seth before Hyperion had killed him. The other was the prize he claimed from the last Brother Bane he had defeated, having lost his original red lightsaber in the process of beating him. He looked more like a common mercenary given Force powers, especially with his beard stretching down to his chest at longest strands and shoulders at shortest.

But she knew he was better than that, especially with the funds he already which had allowed him to obtain an even better mechanical arm than the one he lost on Nar Shaddaa. "Herd him into a place where I can destroy him but do not kill him, I want him for myself," she ordered. Her soldiers obeyed, her desire being to kill Hyperion under her blades himself as she had always dreamed of. But, her soldiers had come to a logical epiphany when facing him that she should have expected them to come to.

"His weaponry is making it difficult for us to actually get him. He uses the shield to protect himself from the bulk of our shots and sends thermal detonators against us. While we recover, he shoots at us with the pistols he has or the bladed projectiles," said her Captain. Morgana knew this would be a problem and perhaps, she should have been much easier on her soldiers than she was. Still, she couldn't show weakness now when she was so close and had spent so much time trying to gain her revenge against Hyperion.

"Make sure he can't escape, corner him at all costs until I can get there and destroy him myself. No matter what happens, he cannot be led to believe he has a chance at escape unless he fights me," Morgana told him. He nodded and went to obey, a man of imposing stature that the others obeyed especially as their armor indicated a Mandalorian heritage. However, they were every bit a dishonorable lot, hence why she liked them. And knew they would obey her orders.

Chapter One

Hyperion should've known it wouldn't be long before his old enemies attacked him once he revealed himself. He should've figured out that the ones who would lust for revenge would come looking for him once the news hit the HoloNet. But he was consoled to know that the boy he had called his son for eleven years would be safe from the enemies he had made. Nonetheless, that didn't do him any good now that he recognized the Devils of Mustafar coming after him. This meant that one of his wealthiest enemies, Morgana, had probably sent these warriors to corner him so that she could destroy him herself without a way he could escape.

But little did they realize that Hyperion knew Ando Prime so well that he knew every crevice, every cave, every iceberg that he could use to his advantage. So, in accordance with the Sith teachings he had embraced in his youth, he drew on the fear and suffering he caused for strength. He let it give energy to his tired muscles, let it bring a sharp edge to his dulling mind, and kept the fight on especially when he had made successful kills among their ranks. But he was always careful never to draw out his lightsabers where and when he could avoid it, preferring to use the more effective metal shield he had brought with him and other crude weapons. Thermal detonators had prevented them from encircling and trapping him whenever he was caught in a narrow pass.

Blaster pistols had allowed him to cull the slow and weak from their ranks whenever the detonators had done their number in dazing their minds with the noise and shockwaves. He saved his shurikens as an absolute resort, preferring to use them when he wanted to complete a silent ambush. When he had culled out more than thirty of the Devils, he began using his pistols with more volleys but always attempting to hit their grenades so that he wasted fewer shots. Thanks to his Force training, these shots seldom missed and the Devils were beginning to realize they would lose him if they didn't think of something clever. This was when he decided it was time to truly prove himself their better by leading them in one of the few places where he had one every single battle he'd ever had since arriving to Ando Prime with his brother in tow.

As they neared one of the unending ice sheets that gave distinction to the otherwise flat, bleak landscape, Hyperion found a cave he recognized. He knew the tunnel systems it lead to as well as how he could best use it to his advantage. More, he knew the right place to set his last grenade if he wanted to trap the soldiers for hire in the system with him so he could snuff out each life at his leisure. And unlike them, he also knew how to get out of them and what exits would lead him closer to his home or to the capital city of Ando Prime. Best of all, he knew that once he sealed the entrance, they would be largely reliant on heat imaging to get him which he also knew how to nullify.

Within these tunnels was a moss he could cover his face and head with so that they would be deceived. He could lather his armor and the rest of his suit in it as well, allowing him to appear a phantom to their scopes. Best of all, he knew the moss wouldn't actually bring down his temperature fatally provided that he moved around a lot which he was sure he would be doing. His plan, once he had detonated his last grenade to trap the final twenty enemies who'd followed him, was fairly simple.

He'd lather himself from head to toe in the oozing moss then snuff out every single life in the place with the last of his weapons. Once he knew they wouldn't detect him, by slaughtering the first of the groups they split into, he would then insight some of his more powerful Force abilities such as Force Fear to dull their already troubled senses. "I'm not trapped here with you," he began when he found a well of moss, "You're trapped in here with me!" The fact his statement had echoed across the passages with the slightest help from the Force meant they would hear him and the first projection of Force Fear upon them would take. Using Force Sight, he counted four groups of five that he could very easily slaughter at his leisure when they started to split up.

Among the things he retained from his training with his grandfather was the fact that people who were afraid were much easier to conquer if you kept them divided. Unity gave courage and confidence to those who might otherwise doubt and cower before your might. While Crassus had been one to use such divisions to first rule the empire their family had commanded in the Unknown Regions then insight trouble in Known Space, Hyperion knew it had practical uses. It could aid him in battles just like this even when the enemy he faced had superior artillery as the Devils of Mustafar often did, what with their slugthrower rifles and pistols.

So for that reason, Hyperion had been using a metal shield he knew would do the job of deflection better while slowly cutting down their numbers with the rest of his arsenal. He had also been careful to augment his hearing long enough to find out their comlinks still worked even within the cave. Which was good because he wanted whoever had hired these assassins to end his life to listen. He wanted them to hear the screams of their hired help and realize he may have been older but he was still every bit as tough to kill as he had been in his youth, maybe tougher. So he began his work, not with the closest group as would have been logical but against the ones who were farthest out.

He needed them to fall into the trap of believing they could corner him and that they were on the verge of doing so when he struck. This way, their hopes were not only shattered but what will they had to fight would be eliminated when they learned of their comrades' fates. So he let the two quintets of soldiers who would've been the frontmost runners for the trap pass him. Then, when he knew he would be almost upon the ones that would've cut him off if he had been trapped and charged ahead, he started with the one that would've covered his left flank. He opened up by shooting three more shurikens into the first three then gunning down the other two.

As always, he shot their thermal detonators so that he could make sure they were dead and that their friends would chime in on the comlinks to ask what'd happened. By the time they would guess as much, he'd be almost upon the second group, against whom he would use different weapons. When he found them, he launched one of his infamous nets against the nearest man then landed on top the quad that remained, shooting them dead at point blank range.

He shot each of their heads, two to a pistol so that he could make sure they didn't have a chance against him. At this point, he knew he had only ten more left but he also knew they would be more careful, more weary now. Of course, this was precisely what made such fights exhilarating, so exciting for him in youth though now he knew much better. Killing for the sake of a challenge or excitement of any kind was pointless unless it was backed by a justifiable cause or served a grander purpose than mere pleasure. In this case, his survival depended on his ability to outmaneuver his enemies with the most minimal degree of effort that could be fathomed on his part.

So when he approached the third group, he shot a knife from his boot and watched it land at the brainstem of the nearest man before he acted. He used the nets on two of them then used his last throwing knives at the remainder, preferring to save his best weapons for the last group and with good reason. Their Captain, one of the leaders of the Devils, had been among the original forty and he was leading the last group. In his final moments, Hyperion wanted him to drink in the realization of his doom like the whiskey he'd enjoyed in many a bar.

So, when he found the Captain's group, he had proceeded to use his last two nets on the first pair he saw, wanting the Captain to watch them die in a slow, agonizing death. Hyperion's nets were especially designed to get tighter and tighter without struggle until he remotely deactivated them. The hug of their metallic coils had been known to get so strong they cut through basic durasteel armor and sliced the helpless victim into dozens of pieces. Then he launched his spear from his mechanical arm to hit the Captain square in his midsection while he produced his whip.

Shielding himself from one man's attacks, he wrapped the bladed tendrils of his vibrowhip around his comrade's throat and decapitated him before he could raise his rifle. The poor man who'd witnessed his comrades fall tried to retreat but Hyperion's whip flailed across and its hook ripped out a chunk of his spinal cord before he could get very far, killing him. By this time, the Captain had yanked out the spear and decided to use it against its original. It was admirable that he chose to fight with the weapon that wounded him but a combination of the whip, the shield, and the ax helped Hyperion to quickly deal with him.

"Are you there, Captain Slaveev, are you there?" said a gruffer man that could only have been the leader of the Devils through his comlink. When his compatriot fell, Hyperion put his whip aside, reclaimed and cleaned his spear, then snagged the comlink for a brief transmission. Thinking carefully, he contemplated what he was to say next then pressed the transmission button and spoke.

"To whomever hired you, tell them they'll have to do better than the Devils of Mustafar to kill me. Your boys have gotten sloppy since the attack against Morgana, twelve years ago," he mocked. Then he dropped the comlink so that it landed on the ground, crushing it with his boot the minute it landed. Knowing that there was an opening not far from there, and that it would lead him home, he concluded he had no further business in the caves. By the time the other Devils had figured out which entrance he used in order to leave the system, he'd long lose them.

Chapter Two

Morgana had heard Hyperion's transmission loud and clear even though she wasn't the one holding the comlink that received it. When the static came, she knew that the comlink had been crushed, likely so that Hyperion couldn't be followed via its signal. She also noticed he hadn't picked up any other comlinks, preferring to disappear into terrain he knew too well to having an ear on the inside. "Even after all these years..." Morgana began, trailing off when she accepted that Hyperion was still craftier than she gave him credit for. On the one hand, she was consoled that she hadn't been incompetent in her pursuit of him but on the other?

Well, one could safely agree that she was lucky that the Devils got more interested in someone who killed any of their members by nature. The more there were dead, the more interested they got in the hunt and sometimes that meant a lower price for their services. Generally, there were no more than a hundred and fifty devils at any one time with this current batch having originally numbered a hundred and thirty before Hyperion's kills. The ones who died were of what they deemed moderate skill, making them even more interested. Because if he could dispatch such experienced soldiers with ease, what'd happen if their seniors got involved.

In a way it was a kind of fetish to see how many of their kind could be killed by a quarry with Morgana holding the highest record so far, hence one of the reasons they joined her. But even so, she knew that if Hyperion tested them enough, their loyalties could change unless she found a way to keep things interesting. That or else she found a way to have them utterly wiped away and replaced with a more complacent troupe of mercenaries. She wasn't unaccustomed to betrayal and strife as these were traits the Dark Side encouraged, even commended. What she didn't care for was the possibility of having to worry about what happened when Hyperion beat her record for most soldiers killed.

"My lady," said a mercenary officer. When she nodded, he spoke, "our spies in the Inner Rim have found reason to believe the Sith still live. They're in hiding from the Jedi and their grand Republic on Balmorra and Dathomir," the officer told her. At first, Morgana thought to ask what this had to do with her vengeance against Hyperion then an idea occurred to her. Apart from running dangerously low on credits (for her standards, as she was still a multi-millionaire), the Sith would also be looking for any recruits who showed promise.

And, since Morgana could still wield a lightsaber with the proficiency of her prime, she could also display her growing Force talents before people who would accept her. More, she had two routes that she could go, either of which could involve the mercenaries if she had wished. She could either usurp the Sith Emperor's throne and then use the superior resources of the Empire to draw out Hyperion or she could turn them into the Republic for the biggest payout of her life and then continue her vengeance with the new funds. More, the Devils of Mustafar would not only have a chance to become a more permanent part of her regimen but they could also have a chance to test themselves against someone of true power like the current emperor. Hell, she could even use the Emperor to dispose of them all then kill him herself and take the throne, if she needed to.

If the Force has willed me to join the ranks of the Sith then that is where I shall go. I can return to Hyperion when I have the command of the Dark Side's acolytes instead of these bumbling mercenaries! she thought to herself silently. "Dathomir is more likely to contain the greater power but the Jedi have already discovered their foundries there. Let's head to Balmorra and see if we can enlist in the Sith cause," she said aloud.

"Enlist, I thought you didn't serve the Sith!" said the Captain.

"Nor do I but the Sith allow people who have a vested interest in themselves to rise to the top of the good chain with relative rapidity. And since I don't need to go to their only Academy for training, they'll probably start me off as a Lord until I prove greater worth. Not to worry, soon they will be serving us rather than us serving them anytime soon. On what basis was the transmission sent?" Morgana said.

"Supplies, my lady. Why?" said the Captain.

"Let's round up all the supplies they need, and what we can afford to buy, then head to Balmorra with the supplies as a peace offering. A gift in return for letting us join as an ally of the Sith with myself in a high enough position of prestige to have influence in the Sith. Let's make a stop at Denon and fetch the supplies then head to Balmorra imminently. Or do you still love the mercenary life?" Morgana ordered.

"As you command my lady. But, forgive me for continuing to question you but won't Hyperion suspect treachery from you and follow? After that last attack, he isn't apt to simply standby and do nothing," said the captain.

"Why do you think we're undergoing this expedition? I'm hoping it draws him out soldier," she told him. He nodded his acceptance if he didn't agree with the plan necessarily. Morgana didn't have either the time or patience to make him understand and besides, it would've taken precious power she didn't feel like wasting. Why tell him she was trying to make Hyperion come to her rather than chase him when she could simply show him that was what they were doing? He would come around inevitably, they all would, especially once they knew Hyperion would certainly be coming for them and Morgana had better challenges to keep them occupied in the meantime.

She was somewhat disappointed that the Sith hadn't been able to maintain their stronghold on Korriban but simultaneously, she wasn't surprised. Korriban and Ziost were likely to have been the first worlds the Jedi would've made sure were taken from the Sith when the Empire lost its advantage. Worlds like Dathomir, Honoghr, Umbara, and worlds like that were more repositories for pupils less fit to be Sith than those who came to Korriban and Ziost. The same was true of Yavin 4, Nathema, and other ancient Sith worlds where the Dark Side ran strongly. With the capital of the Empire gone, it was the very insignificance of planets like Dathomir and Balmorra, compared to Korriban and Ziost, that made them such good refuges. Secrets that she could always reveal to the Jedi if she had to, especially if her life depended on it.