Chapter Nineteen

Morgause held her father's head on her arm and his back against her lap. "Please Daddy, stay with me," she begged, tears welling up from her eyes and her voice stifled by sadness. Dantius and the others gathered round to see Hyperion for the last time in case this was the end. Medically speaking, there was nothing any of them could do to save him and something gave even Dantius the impression that he wasn't looking for that anymore. Then again, medically speaking there would be nothing wrong with him if they were to subject him to a battery of diagnostic tests to find out.

So it was that Hyperion began to utter his last words to his beloved daughter, the child of his advances on Patricia. "Are you safe? Are you alright?" he asked in a hushed voice. She nodded and he stroked her left temple as he spoke again. "Then my purpose is complete," he said to her.

"Please, don't go father! Don't go! Uncle Dantius, you're a Jedi, can't you heal him?" Morgause begged. Dantius silently shrugged, saying that he didn't know if he could heal the damage of Drain Life even if he wanted to.

"Do not begrudge your uncle if he cannot heal me. He already gave me my chance for redemption or else we wouldn't have met," Hyperion whispered to her, bringing his hand down her cheek. She looked up at Dantius who nodded admission that he had been the reason that Hyperion was where he was to begin with.

"Originally, I offered him the mission in return for the expungement of his records with the Republic and associated allies. A deal's a deal but now it doesn't look like he'll be needing the other part where he gets enough credits to live his life freely without need to work again. I can't say what the Hutts still think of him or for that matter, what the Sith would think. Only that records of him were likely deleted when we raided Dathomir and Balmorra to destroy or seal away everything they have away from common use. Any traces we missed will be too miniscule for them to use," Dantius told her.

"I took the mission in order to pursue a chance of peace in this lifetime. Lo and behold that I would actually acquire it by meeting you. You have grown into such a beautiful woman with a powerful connection to the Force, Morgause," Hyperion said, coughing up some of his last life.

"Don't speak, Daddy. We'll get you some medical help and you're going to be alright," she promised.

"At what price? Hooked up to a machine even to breathe, much less eat or drink? No, this is better, in the arms of someone I love most in life. I just wish I could've seen your brother, one last time," Hyperion replied. Morgause hugged his head close and it was then that Inoy offered a confession.

"If I may, Hyperion. When Menelaus and I first came to Dathomir to disperse his mother's ashes, I discovered something. After I killed a Sith acolyte, I sensed the Force come alive in your son as if he were a Wound in the Force like Meetra Surik and Lord Nihilus. Guess Verrin succeeded in his experiment to create such a wound though he didn't get the chance to turn it into a weapon for the Sith. Yet the Jedi could turn it into a harbinger of justice for the Light, if given the chance," Inoy confessed.

Hyperion looked galvanized to hear the news that his son had proven himself Force-sensitive after the years he spent raising him as his own. Turning to Morgause, he used what strength he had to put in a request. "Daughter dearest, promise... promise me that you will become a Jedi and you will train your brother as your Padawan learner," Hyperion asked. Morgause nodded and said that she promised to become a Jedi and find her foster brother that he might be trained as her Padawan learner. Dantius agreed with it as well and with good reason: once Morgause completed her Jedi training, she would have the most well-rounded understanding of the Force and be the most capable of training her foster brother.

"And I will see to it that she is assigned a kind and understanding Master for the duration of her training. I know just the person who can help her integrate her training from Morgana into becoming a tool for the Light. You have my word, brother, that Morgause will be the best Knight that Menelaus could ask for in training him," Dantius told him. Hyperion smiled gently and asked his daughter one more thing that was a little more understandable this time.

"Lay my head down to the ground please, I want to embrace my end as a warrior should," he asked her. She nodded, not bothering to question her father's request as she laid his head to rest then put his lightsaber to his chest. He wrapped his hands around it and she let him go so that he could do so, his legs brought together so that he could ready himself for his end. "I love you, my child," he said. The words stung his daughter who let her head sink in grieving for Hyperion as she and Dantius both sensed the last breath of life leave him behind as he became one with the Force.

"Jace, can we get a squad to raze the Palace to the ground as soon as we're out. Hyperion's dead and I want a funeral fit for a king. I'll signal you when we have exited the Palace," Dantius said. There was no more resistance when they came back down the Palace steps, their soldiers having seen off the last of any potential resistance they could've faced. When they emerged from the Palace, Dantius decided to prepare a signal for sendout when they reached the last stairs of the establishment then watched as Jace's fighters came in to do the job he'd asked of them. As they burned down the palace and cremated Hyperion, Dantius turned to his niece with an important question.

"You made no effort to recover your father's lightsaber for later use. Why?" he asked.

"Aunt Morgana once told me the Jedi say that their members have to let go of all ties to their past, including trinkets and souvenirs. If I had taken my father's lightsaber, I'd not only be violating his desire to die a warrior's death but wouldn't I also be holding onto the past? All I want to have of my father is the memory, the memory of the man who loved me, who laid down his life for me, and even offered it when I wanted revenge for my mother," Morgause told him. You are more ready to be a Jedi than you realize, Morgause: I'm proud of you Dantius thought.

Chapter Twenty

As the war against the Sith was wrapping up, Hyperion emerged from his corporeal shell and found himself standing before a shining gold gate with a bright white light behind it. The light was so intense that he could've sworn he felt like he was approaching a sun. "Where am I?" he asked.

"You have fought for the cause of the Light, in spite of your dark origins, with courage and selflessness. In the most critical hour, you chose to give your life for your child and helped the Guardians of the Netherworld retrieve a spirit who had evaded them for sixty years. You have made right the wrongs of your youth by raising a child that wasn't your own and aiding the one who was in her time of need. Welcome, Hyperion Corialanus Algethii to the paradise known to souls such as you," said a female voice who called from behind the gates. As she spoke, the gates swung open and within called all the souls of those who were Force-sensitive that had done good or selflessly sacrificed their all to the Light.

He saw Revan, of all people, and his wife along with Meetra Surik and her friend Visas Marr who gave her life to stopping Lord Nihilus. Hyperion also saw figures who had died in the war, serving as champions of the Light and doing good deeds for those who went hungry because of the battle between Jedi and Sith. "I don't understand, I did such horrible things in my youth. How could all that be wiped away?" Hyperion asked.

"You look at your deeds and think of yourself a monster. But even a monster can learn to understand love and the duties of a father which is precisely what you have done. The Jedi speak of non-attachment and while that serves some well, the most powerful denizens you see here were those who learned that love can be an emboldening emotion. Join the souls of those who gave their all to the balance of the Force as you have done," said the female voice that greeted him. As it spoke, it also manifested a physical form, that of a woman with glowing skin, green hair, and white robes with gold rims on the ends of the sleeves and robes.

"I am the Daughter of Mortis, the one who is the Light. My brother will be punishing your grandfather throughout the millennium, you have my word on that," she added a moment later. He looked around to the glistening white and gold of the realm, the limitless food and water available to the inhabitants. Even Revan, who in life had been tormented for three centuries by Emperor Vitiate and had fallen under his spell after the Mandalorian Wars, wore a bright smile. Together with his wife and the family he had never had in life, Revan, Satele, and Avner wanted for nothing here.

"The worse monsters than you or Revan are the ones being tormented in the realm of darkness my brother rules throughout the rest of time by will of the Guardians. Our Father has ensured that that is so. Come join us and know the peace you have longed for," said the Daughter. Hyperion took another look back to where he had come from, seeing only the flames of the palace behind the quartet of the Jedi and his daughter walking away from the palace where he had fallen. There was no way he was going to get back to his body now, even if he had wanted to and something told him that he shouldn't have even tried anyway.

"Perhaps we can help coax him, milady," interjected a voice Hyperion hadn't heard for over forty years. He turned rapidly to see his mother and father looking down upon him, the former with bright, wavy red hair that reached her shoulder blades at longest strands. Her eyes shimmered like emeralds in their sockets hence where Dantius had likely gotten his eyes from. His father wore short hair, almost buzzed, and a thick beard that hid his chin, cheeks, and lips with the blue eyes that Hyperion knew he had carried throughout his life. "Take my hand, love, and know your peace," she asked him, extending a hand his way.

Hyperion extended a hand forward and as he did so, his armor shed off his body, breaking into millions of pieces like clay. The closer he got to grasping her, the more the mechanical parts of his right arms shed to reveal flesh and bone beneath. His beard shrank until his face was as clean and unshaven as a newborn baby and a full head of curly brown hair burst to existence on his head. The armor he wore in life was replaced with a beige toga with gold rims on the sleeves as well as a gold belt on the waist and rimming the ankles.

Sandals were strapped to his feet and his skin felt as fresh as he might have been when he was a child. When he felt her fingers wrap around his hand, he knew he had been restored the figure of his adolescence with the hair and lack of beard as well as a more trim body. Father, mother, and child ascended the steps and Hyperion watched the gates close behind him. He knew he would never be able to return to his daughter and adopted son but he knew they would have everything they needed to survive without him. With this knowledge stored, he turned his gaze to the paradise above and found that he didn't miss his old life at all.

No, he didn't have the battle scars he had developed from his years as a blade for hire, he didn't have the burns from when his grandfather electrocuted him, he didn't even have his emotional woes anymore. He never had to worry about going hungry and he never had to worry about getting fat whenever he overate. But the most important gift he had ever acquired from this paradise was the ability to see the mortal realm from pools in the paradise where other souls sometimes swam as well. In one, he saw a vision of someone who looked like Morgause but he knew it wasn't: it was a thousand years after she would've passed away of old age.

Good girl Hyperion thought with a chuckle, glad to see his lineage still somehow had lived on even if not through his brother as he once thought it would be. Never again did he have visions of the sins he committed while in the mortal realm and the past was obliterated to him as soon as he entered this place of eternal bliss and wonder. In time, others joined the ranks of the souls rewarded with this same peaceful existence and he never once thought to ask if there was a way back whether as a disembodied soul or in another corporeal shell. Several of the souls he met afterward even fought with new dynasties of Sith in life and compared notes to his own toppling of a Sith regime. But from time to time, Hyperion would gaze back to his daughter's life and wonder if she would die believing that he had done right by her, a question that went unanswered until she arrived to this same paradise and joined her father in unending blissful laughter.