Chapter Twenty-Three
Hyperion readied with his entire arsenal of weapons, prepared to take down Lady Minshuto's men without the aid of his lightsaber. He wanted to reserve his dueling energy for when he found her and so, sought to use his blasters and his shield for dealing with her soldiers when he boarded her ship. Whenever he knew he would lesser Sith Lords, he would send members of the Imperial Guard in his group to take them down, allowing him to continue on his way with impunity. On occasion, he had a subordinate lord who had a rivalry or grudge against a lord in Lady Minshuto's service and so would let them settle their rivalry.
Finally, after what felt like several hours despite being only twenty minutes or so, he reached her chamber. On the other side of the door, Morgana was already waiting for him, eager to take him down at long last. She stood to attention as he entered slowly, unsure what tricks she had up her sleeve. He simply knew that he wouldn't be using his blaster or most of his other weapons for that matter. Crassus suggested using the spear and shurikens which Hyperion briefly considered before reminding him that Morgana would be using the Force which could make it difficult for him to use those weapons.
Yet you will have an edge if you can disrupt her concentration on more complex spells and rituals of the Dark Side. You are a warrior and as such, you are prone to the kinds of problems associated with a warrior including limited usage of Force powers. Start thinking to outsmart her or you will soon be in trouble from the more complex powers she can summon against you Crassus told him. Hyperion agreed about that and decided to maybe use a couple grenades while he was at it, knowing his only real advantage lied in exploiting that part of Morgana's nature.
"Unexpected but not unwelcome, I have been waiting for this chance most of my adult life. You can't imagine how I have reveled in thoughts of how I intend to destroy you when I found you. How you would suffer for torturing her as she suffered from your advances!" Morgana told him. Hyperion readied his lightsabers for the duel to come but he did not immediately go to the blade immediately.
"Morgana..." he began, "you talk of wanting me to suffer, of wanting me tortured as I tortured her. Not a day goes by when I am not in torment for my actions in youth, not a day goes by when I wish I could bend the folds of time so that I could stop myself from all the things I did to her, to my brother, to... to you. I have not even begun to pay for the sins of my stupidity nor do I believe any apology will ever free me of your hatred."
"If that is so, then why do you still fight me?" she asked him.
"Because the path you walk, the path of vengeance, is a fool's errand. Think of how long it took you to even have a shot of destroying me with Seth's help, let alone the help of your Devils. How long it took you to even come face to face with me after what I did to your sister, think of things like that. And think of what will happen when you kill me, what purpose will guide your life then?" he answered.
"Power and domination of the galaxy will be the only purpose I need. I will tear down the Empire and rebuild the Sith anew to one day conquer the Jedi and their vaunted Republic! Why do you think I persist so vehemently in my vengeance against you for what you did to my sister?" she replied.
"Because you have been guided by every bit the same hateful stupidity that once guided my actions. You see a wrong performed you and you believe only blood will right it as I once did when Dantius incarcerated me on Teth. But now, I see why even the Sith sometimes look down on games of revenge: because it is not only one of the ultimate acts of selfishness it is the only one that does not further the will of the Force in anyway. Even if the Jedi are still ignorant when they say that the Force works in mysterious ways," Hyperion explained.
"Then face me on your newfound moral piety and not on the monstrosity I know you are capable of being. You raped my sister, beat her, and left her for dead. Now I will see you die, suffering as she suffered before I take your life!" Morgana said. Then the fighting began with Hyperion keeping her at bay with both his blades despite her using one crimson blade against him. In all, she was an incredibly skilled warrior with expertise in the seven forms of lightsaber combat with specialties in Ataru, Juyo, Makashi, and Soresu evident.
After a joust, Hyperion assumed a ready position once more and said, "What I did was unforgivable, I know that Morgana. But it is not your place to decide my judgment, unless it is the will of the Force that I fall before you." But Morgana was only half listening, concentrated to the point of utter fixation on taking Hyperion's life. She displayed prowess in the Force Speed talent which further made her dangerous to him since that meant she could dart away from him, reassess the situation before her then dart back in with a new plan.
This meant he too would have to change strategies especially as she seemed to be assessing his skills, scanning for weaknesses she could exploit against him. It was when it was looking like Hyperion finally got a sense of things that she then surprised him by revealing the presence of another lightsaber on her person, throwing off his assessment of her completely. Now, he had to change tactics again, learn how she fought and moved, the works that he had performed with her traditional combat. Since he was using Jar'Kai, this didn't take as long as her traditional styling but it took him a minute or two.
Then she surprised him further with a magnetic pommel on each of her blades, allowing her to form a perfect saberstaff, forcing the cycle of assessment to begin again. Saberstaff assessment was slightly longer than Jar'Kai but in revealing all these tricks, Morgana had inadvertently given Hyperion a complete picture of her lightsaber abilities. Combining the methods he'd developed for countering her styles, he knew she wouldn't have much of a chance against him unless she could think of something extremely clever. Unfortunately for him, he had noticed the look of concentration she had on her face and recognized it not as concentration on him but concentration on something else. Then, just when he thought she was going to be killed alas, she sped away and initiated a spell he never thought he would see used against him or see on anyone else in his life: she performed the infamous Memory Walk on his mind.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hyperion couldn't hear Crassus when the Memory Walk was initiated nor could he react except to see the memories of his worse deeds brought to the surface. Every embarrassment, whether performed on or by him, every jeer and torment he had ever experienced or conducted arose to the surface. "Nothing but darkness and the sins of your past lie ahead of you, Hyperion Algethii," Morgana shouted though distantly. Hyperion saw the darkness all around him, unsure if this was how Memory Walk was supposed to work. All he could surmise was that the form he perceived for himself was the form in his mind as he saw the gauntlet he had wielded when he was a gladiator and even the simple garb of those bygone days of his youth.
Walking forward, he continued in darkness until he could hear shouts in the distance which compelled him to run toward them. When he reached the source, he saw his childhood form reliving the torments caused by Crassus. "You were not this weak when you lead me to your parents!" Crassus taunted.
"Forgive me, grandfather, forgive me!" begged the kid. But the grown Hyperion knew where this was going before Crassus had even spoken in this vision.
"That is not the way of the Dark Side," hissed the vestige of his grandfather. Then he shot bolts of purple lightning at his grandson, subjugating him to the torture that numerous Force-sensitives suffered. Again and again, he experienced this cycle of his childhood form begging forgiveness and Crassus, again and again until Hyperion felt the pain in his head like a migraine. The pain then continued to escalate until at last, he began seizing and crawled desperately to some respite he could find from the pain. Then suddenly, it was over and Hyperion was still alive in spite of what he had just experienced.
"What... what happened? Shouldn't I be dead?" Hyperion asked, the echo in his voice confirming that he was still in the ethereal realm of the Memory Walk spell.
"Come to the light, my boy. I have done what I can to save you but the barrage of misdeeds you have either experienced or performed will keep punishing you until you find the way out," said the voice of his grandfather, this time older and a tad friendlier. Hyperion crawled at first, still hunched over in pain from the agony he felt all over his body, even aching in his arms. Never had he thought he would again feel anything in his right arm with the fact Dantius had severed it yet here he was in the ethereal realm of his mind and the Memory Walk.
Then again, the last time he had ever been an ethereal realm, it had been under illusions cast forth by his grandfather in preparation for a life of Rage. "Remember how you conquered the illusions I set forth? Find the Sight again and you will survive this," Crassus said, as if spurred on by the thoughts of the past. Hyperion thought carefully then realized Crassus was talking about Force Sight, the only ability that allowed a Force-sensitive to see past illusions without somehow dispelling them. So he concentrated on the Force, thinking to that old ability and he realized he was still back on the ship, Morgana watching him writhe in pain from the severity of the spell she had inflicted on him.
He saw as she drank in his suffering and enjoyed his anguish like a nourishing meal as a model Sith should. So he trudged on in the ethereal realm created from his mind, experiencing every single sin he had ever performed to the point of agonizing pain over the course of what was only several minutes in real time. But in that realm, it felt like many thousands of years had past between every excursion but as Hyperion examined each one, he found himself growing in strength and mental resolution to power through this curse. However, he knew the worst was yet to come and his ethereal form continued to trudge on, rising from a slithering stance to a hunched but upright walk. When he arrived at where he had seen the light before, it washed over him in a blaze that revealed the memory he had yet to cover: Patricia's rape.
He felt every agony she did in all the same areas she did, from every thrust of his younger form into her flower to the pommeling he gave her face. This continued until the pain he felt in himself physically was so overwhelming he thought he had been transformed into Patricia and made to experience what he'd done to her for that one moment. When it was finally over, he found himself alive and well, the Sight doing nothing to save him from the pain even when he had used it to try and overcome the flashback of Patricia. "Now, do you see? Do you understand now what you did to my sister?" Morgana said, igniting both lightsabers in preparation for his doom.
Hyperion was on his hands and knees when he returned to his corporeal shell from the Memory Walk spell, nodding frantically and panting heavily like he were an akk dog. He was sweating profusely like he had been training in preparation for work with his pupils though he knew this wasn't the case. "I was hoping that memory of what you did to my sister would be your last obstacle. If none of your other sins broke you, I knew that one would or it would leave you so close to destroyed the difference would be irrelevant and I could move in," Morgana said.
"And when you've had your revenge, when you have your power, what then?" Hyperion asked. He was prepared to die, prepared to be tortured further by Morgana, prepared for anything the Force willed into happening. That was when time froze and Morgana stood with her lightsabers crossed in an X shape to deliver the critical blow. From behind him, Crassus' ethereal form walked into view and stared him down with a mixture of anticipation and disappointment.
"You stand on the knife edge of a bifocating path, young one. Do you choose life and allow me the singlest moment of control to deal with this pest? Or do you choose death and let her destroy us both?" he asked. Hyperion noticed that time was paused but not frozen, Morgana was still moving toward him although Crassus had managed to slow down the pace of it. She hadn't even had time to answer his question about what would happen once she had all she strode for.
So Hyperion looked up to his grandfather and made the only logical choice that stood before him. "Take care of her," he said.
"Gladly," was the response. Time returned to its normal form just in time for Morgana to answer his question.
"I suppose I will find out then if I have achieved my peace of mind and can help the Sith to begin again. So why not start by killing you here and now?" she said as she prepared to execute the Emperor's Wrath, ending the Kaggath with a victory. But just then, Hyperion found himself invigorated with the strength to rise up to full height faster than she could react. More importantly, his mechanical right hand was temporarily replaced by the ethereal arm of his grandfather as was his left hand. Then, before she could react even to cast a barrier against it, Crassus used his son's body to cast such a punishing volley of Force Lightning that the bolts ripped through the barrier, short-circuited her lightsabers, and burned her beautiful body to a crisp.
Even with the mechanical arm, Crassus' storm had destroyed her without impediment and now, a charred husk was all that remained of a powerful Sith enchantress. "What... what have you done?" Hyperion asked.
"No it's what we have done, together. Now leave this ship, my storm destroyed the controls and the self-destruct sequence should be starting soon," Crassus told his grandson. Sure enough, a robotic voice told announced that a self-destruct sequence would active in five minutes.
Hyperion sped as best he could past the bodies of his fellow Sith Lords, past the soldiers who'd either fallen to his command or in defense of their deceased mistress. As he walked, he found himself confused: he'd seen Morgana die but somehow, her presence was not fully eliminated. Almost as if she had not yet become one with the Force the way that she would have if she weren't trying to preserve her conscience. Had she somehow bound herself to a talisman that would exist as long as the galaxy did?
Was she attempting essence transfer on him and he was simply fighting it off more powerfully than she was expecting him to? He brushed it aside and used Force Rage to reach his shuttle, ordering it to embark on the journey back to his quarters just in time for the ten-second count to begin. They couldn't have been more than forty meters out when the Patricia finally detonated, taking those who had died within it to a fiery grave. Hyperion had won the Kaggath with Morgana's death and it wouldn't be long before the Dark Council was commed accordingly.
So he rested himself while he was waiting for the Dark Council to receive the confirmation that he would be awarded accolades for his victory. Letting the last several standard weeks finally catch up to him, he let himself fall into a deep and nourishing slumber that lasted for nearly a day. When he awoke, Morgana's forces had completely surrendered to his, provided they hadn't already died in service to their lady. More to the point, they were even willing to break with the past and serve him as loyally as they had served her as had been the case with many a Sith trooper in the past.
The final accounting was completed with Morgana being concluded as having been so resoundingly beaten that she was never worthy of her seat on the Dark Council. In contrast, Hyperion was more than worthy of his position as the Emperor's Wrath. However, there was a comm he received over the channels that changed his mind about any immediate celebrations he may have had planned.
