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.