Chapter Four

Hyperion was contemplating the visions he'd seen of Morgana stabbing him in the back amidst the carnage of Algethiius when he heard the first reports. Dathomir was being attacked by the combination of Republic and unknown paramilitary forces that conspired to destroy Sith holdings on the planet. He chuckled when he realized that his brother had followed his advice and gotten paramilitaries involved. So far as the description of the non Republic forces were concerned, Hyperion guessed that Dantius had somehow recruited the Space Hawks and the Silver Hands, especially in the images of silver-armored troops arriving to Dathomir's surface. Hyperion knew the time had come to start the departure for Nogatan but also knew that Crassus wasn't quite ready to make that move just yet.

No, he still had other plans to complete here on Balmorra before he could hope to initiate a move to Nogatan and the ceremony from there. And amongst those plans, it would seem, was to test Hyperion's loyalties by sending one of the last units of the Imperial Guard upon him. Hyperion countered them with his nets, slugthrowers, spear, whip, grenades, and shurikens before finishing the last one with ease via his ax and shield. The Imperial Guards were powerful but they had failed to defeat the likes of mercenaries such as the Devils of Mustafar and now proved disadvantaged against Hyperion even now. But Hyperion realized that they were just the warmup, especially once the lightsaber he'd stolen from the last of the Brothers Bane was levitated from his chest strap by a powerful tug from the Force.

Activated by a woman he had never seen before, he realized something about her that chilled him to the bone. She bore a striking resemblance to Morgana as she must've looked when she was younger only Hyperion knew for a fact that Morgana had no children, which left only one possibility. "Hello Daddy," she said a moment later before adding, "The name's Morgause, my aunt chose it when I was born." Hyperion didn't even bother trying to recover his ax or reach his lightsaber, instead he raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

"So, Morgana told you the truth. You have grown into a charming, lovely, and powerful woman," Hyperion said, not even trying to deny that he recognized his daughter before him.

"No thanks to you except for the rage your deed against my mother that burned within me as a child! That burns now hotter with the death of my aunt, the one woman who found my potential and trained me to avenge my mother if she failed," Morgause told him. Hyperion let a tear roll down his eye, the very embodiment of the vengeance he sowed into Patricia's family having finally blossomed into this woman before him.

"Before she died, did Morgana tell you what happened to your grandparents? Did she tell you what my brother did to me in the wake of your mother's suicide?" Hyperion inquired. Morgause let out a cruel laugh before replying as he suspected she would if he understood Morgana's personality correctly.

"Huh, I need not know those things to desire revenge against you. It was you who wronged my mother, not my grandparents! And it is you who has still to suffer yet, not your brother in his own drive for revenge against you!" Morgause explained. Hyperion unclipped his remaining lightsaber and threw it to the side, also unclipping his shield while his daughter looked on puzzled. Then Hyperion fell to his knees in front of his daughter, looking her straight in her eyes as he explained what he was doing.

"You're right, Morgause. I have not yet begun to pay penance for the sins of my youth, no apology will ever take back how you were brought into this galaxy, and no amount of explanation could ever justify the pain I caused your mother's family. So if you want to kill me, if seeing me dead will make you whole, I won't stop you. The gifts of the Dark Side come at a price most terrible to one's soul and if you believe you must be the arbiter of the price I must pay then I will gladly prostrate myself to your whim," Hyperion told her. Morgause moved in close raising the yellow blade of her new lightsaber to strike the fatal blow that would end her father's life as soon as she brought it down.

Hyperion looked up to his daughter's eyes as she prepared to strike him down, prepared to exact revenge for Morgana, Patricia, and the Brillante family. He was neither afraid nor proud of what he had done, neither haughty nor embarrassed, simply tired of running away, tired of letting his guilt wrack him without end in sight. The Sith Lord didn't speak as there was no need, not while he was baring his neck to the child he'd forcibly conceived with Patricia, many years before. But Morgause was unable to do it, lowering and deactivating her blade as she broke down into tears. Hyperion breathed a silent sigh of relief then slowly approached her, rising to a crouch as he did so.

"It isn't so easy to take a life when you have to think about it, is it? So much easier to let impulse override your senses until after the fact, isn't it? This is the failing of the Dark Side, Morgause, the reason for my failure to win Patricia's heart and gain her consent before we had you. Listen close to my story and learn why you were right to forswear your revenge in sparing my life. I was born to a Crown Prince on a distant planet called Algethiius, I made a deal with my Sith Lord grandfather that cost me my soul," Hyperion began.

"The Emperor mentioned something along those lines when he sent me to destroy you. He said he trained you as the human Crassus when you were a child, taught you the ways of the Sith," Morgause said when she was a little more coherent. Hyperion nodded and locked arms with her, embracing her as a father might embrace a child he was trying to comfort. So that she couldn't kill him in the embrace, he levitated the lightsaber she'd stolen away from either of them. When he knew she wouldn't be reaching out to him with the Force in order to kill him, he continued with his story from her comment.

"Through him, I learned how to kill many who were deserving but usually many more who were not. I helped my grandfather kill my mother and father, helped him imprison my brother in a coma for seven years, and helped him eliminate political enemies who stood in his way. You lose yourself to the Dark Side without an anchor to keep yourself centered against the thirst for blood the Dark Side will inevitably create within you," Hyperion told her. Morgause nodded, a movement Hyperion felt on his shoulder the way he sometimes felt it from Menelaus when he was a child.

"Tell me," she started, "what happened to my grandparents? What did your brother do to you when my mother died?" Hyperion knew this was a question that he was supposed to hear her ask on the onset of their meeting.

"My brother beat the poodoo out of me when I was drunk then sent me off to a correctional asylum in Teth. I was tortured by the guards, inmates attempted to rape and kill me, and I was put in solitary confinement for killing four inmates and permanently injuring seven more. As for your grandparents, Morgana had been training under the influence of a Sith Lord named Darth Inferis. As one of her last tests before she could claim the mantle of Sith Master from him, she was asked to kill your grandparents and take you under her wing as her next apprentice. When she succeeded in all of that, she betrayed and destroyed her master, arranging an accident for her parents that appeared like a landspeeder crash but was truthfully an assassination," Hyperion said stoically.

Morgause looked at him with galvanized eyes when she recoiled from his arms and he only nodded. "That all happened and I bet you anything that Morgana would be willing to confess that if you questioned her about them. But now that she is dead, the only guarantee you have that she'd have confessed is if she left recordings in her strongholds. Now, why don't we go and take the fight to our real enemy together as father and daughter," Hyperion told her.

She smiled, recovering the lightsaber that she had taken from Hyperion while Hyperion recovered the one he would've used against her if they had dueled. He also recovered his spear and his ax from the Guards he killed in addition to the shield that he had also upholstered when he decided he wanted to persuade his daughter from the Dark path. When the duo arrived at the Emperor's quarters, Hyperion dispatched the guards that stood at the door, first spearing one with a Force-imbued throw and then chopping the other to pieces with the ax. Leaving the larger blade of the ax embedded in the head of his last victim, he opened the door and together, they entered for the fight of their lives.

Crassus, in the form of the Pau'an Sith Lord Darth Imperius, turned in that moment to face the adversaries before him. "I did not expect this at all. Still, I should have realized that you would lack the stomach to eliminate your father, Morgause. You spoke greatly of wanting vengeance but seldom do those who boast that they are fighters turn out to be such themselves," Crassus told them.

"She has seen the depths of your evil for what it is, grandfather. Together, the two of us are powerful enough to destroy you and put the Empire on the right path!" Hyperion snapped at him.

"If she has truly been turned against me by your grace, Hyperion, then she will die with you as well. And her death will be on you as are the deaths of those you killed in your service to me when you were her age," Crassus declared emotionlessly. It was then that all three ignited lightsabers and the duel between them began for supremacy of the Sith Empire Remnant.