Calliope breached their minds displaying vivid images before Rey. Her voice narrating-;
An adolescent Calliope sat before a golden vanity allowing the woman behind her to intricately braid her wild chestnut locks. Her eyes voluminous and sparkling despite her sour demeanor.
"I was a very spoiled child. I wanted for nothing until the day came when my mother told me I was leaving home."
The young girl's arms were folded.
"Are you paying attention Sunset?" the former Queen tugged on her hair, "You'll have to do this on your own there." Sosha Soruna had always recited how important styling was no matter the occasion.
"I still don't understand why I have to go." Calliope scowled.
"When I was your age I trained as a fighter pilot." Sosha finished the braid placing a kiss on top of her head.
"You got to go home at the end of the day." the girl grumbled.
"I was full of bitterness towards my mother, but also I was afraid. I had never known anything beyond the warm embrace of Naboo."
The room phased into a hangar. A middle-aged Leia and Han stood before the Millenium Falcon. Sosha and Leia embraced in their reunion. Leia's eyes lingered on Calliope,"My how you've grown." As they shook hands.
"My mother has told me so much about you Senator Organa." She politely replied.
Sosha scanned the duo, "Weren't you also taking your son to Luke? I'd like to meet him."
Han leaned back into the Falcon, "Ben, get down here!"
Lanky and awkward with freshly cut hair exposing his ears Ben Solo trudged down the Falcon's ramp.
Calliope could feel Rey clench in a flurry of emotion
"Ben and I should have found common ground in the fact that we were both being sent far away from the people's whose love we craved the most. Instead…."
The Jedi Temple was now before them, unburnt. Ben and Calliope were sparring each other within an inch of their lives. When they sensed Master Luke approaching they lightened up on each other, and then returned to attacking each other with intense fury upon his departure.
"We lit a fire in trying to outdo the other. Who could be the stronger? I matched him until one day he took me to the ground with such ease I couldn't believe it. I had to know where it came from."
Calliope escorted Ben everywhere he went until he answered her.
"There's a voice in my head!" He yelled finally frustrated by Calliope's relentless personality.
Calliope folded her arms in disbelief and then her face morphed into a panic.
"Snoke spoke to me then. Promising me all that he had promised Ben. I told myself if my mother wanted a protector for our home world. She was going to get the strongest one possible no matter what. And thus began my tumble into darkness…"
Images of the Temple burning, something Rey had already seen played out before her. This translated into Snoke's throne room and Calliope before it bedecked in midnight robes. She kneeled removing her hood, and the intricate braid her mother had taught her falling to her back.
"Rise Nyx, apprentice of the night." Snoke's voice echoed.
"My original mission was to find force sensitive children. I went to different planets, moons, and I even made regular checks among the stormtroopers. When I did find the rare blink of sensitivity I presented them to Snoke only for them to refuse his teaching, and I had to snuff them out."
Several planets played out before them. "Jakku…" Rey's thoughts brought them to the desert planet.
She could see herself in the background of Nyx's interrogation of Unkar Plutt. Unkar Plutt had pointed out all the children. Her eyes did fall upon Rey, but she shook herself as if she'd imagined it. The knight left, taking none with her.Nyx returned to the star destroyer overhead and into Snoke's throne room where he loomed over her in person while she reported her unsuccessful trip to the planet.
"I think it's time we begin another project, my dear, one that will perhaps be more successful."
"I agree, Supreme Leader."
Snoke chuckled, "If only all my apprentices were so fearless and willing." He stood summoning her to stand as well, "Tell me what do you think of your mother?"
"Other than the fact that she started me on this path I haven't thought on her since I left the temple." Calliope was quick and sure to answer.
"But she's not your mother…. Is she?" Snoke questioned.
The force sent a tremor through the past and the present.
Nyx gave the man a look of complexity, "If you mean she is not my birth mother I am aware."
Snoke took a deep chortle pulling from the girl's thoughts, "But you were always a Soruna." He clicked his tongue, "My dear girl how much more important can you get than the daughter of a former Queen?" His question rhetorical, "No your lineage is vastly more prominent than some figure head from one planet. You, my faithful apprentice of the night derive directly from Lord Sidious himself."
"The Emperor?" She recalled her history lessons from Naboo.
"Indeed, I'm sure your expensive education probably veered you to think of him as a monster? To people like us rich and powerful in the dark side. He was a visionary."Snoke circled the girl, "Do you know of Kylo Ren's lineage?"
Her body seemed to tingle at his name, "I do." She remembered his prized possession.
Snoke returned to his throne a sickening grimace on his face."Let us talk of Project Rebirth."
"I remember this as the first time that any inkling of question rose within me. He wanted me to mother a new generation of force users that the universe wasn't producing readily enough for him. Snoke was in my head and he knew the tremor of hesitation. He persuaded me with images I never thought possible. I became soothed and placated by the idea of children. Teaching them the ways of the force- bringing them up on my home world the new center of the First Order. I went to Kylo Ren…. on more occasions than I can count. When I finally did become pregnant with a child Snoke sent Ren to the opposite end of the galaxy while I remained cooped up in Mid-Rim constantly growing restless aboard my star destroyer."
Nyx sat in front of a console tapping downward through a list of projects until she came upon Rebirth … in detail. Each Knight of Ren's genetics were broken down and analyzed matching them up with the girl. Ben was first and that file was marked 'in progress'. Balor as marked 'next' and so on until the last being Shinto. Nyx took both fists slamming them down on the console with such power and rage it destroyed the computer, and the energy took so much from her she passed out.
"I remember waking up in the med-bay alone but also not. It was the most amorphous and powerful thing I ever felt. He spoke to me softly telling me I could come back from all of this. That I still had a choice, but I felt so trapped."
A tall robed man with shaggy hair, a scar across his eye, and a robotic right arm stood before her bed in a blue haze.
"Don't worry that shell of a man, Snoke, can't sense me." He comforted.
Nyx took a deep breath positioning herself upward, a protective hand over her stomach,"Who are you?"
"I'm someone who cares about you and your son."
She gave a hitched breath, "S-son."
"I didn't believe him at first, that I could come back from all the suffering and destruction I had reigned across the galaxy, but the more my son grew inside me the more the man haunted me, and Snoke could feel my deference rising."
Nyx stood before Snoke, a mere hologram. A man cloaked as she was holding her up right. She was ready to be due any day, but her crippling pain didn't stop her from arguing with a man who held her life in the balance.
"If you think I'm going to keep doing this with others you underestimate how much I fear you."
The man outlined in blue stood protectively behind her, encouraging her, but also cautioning her to save her strength and think of way out that wouldn't harm the child.
Snoke gave a deep sickening laugh, "My dear girl, how I have always enjoyed your spirit." He leaned forward in the throne, "I'll remind you I can continue Project Rebirth with or without you." Snoke scoffed, "Child."
Nyx reached out to the man behind her pleading for guidance willing to do anything.
"He tried to convince me to steal a tie-fighter. This was until I admitted to him I had no piloting skills what-so-ever. We hatched a plot right then and there, so instant not even Snoke caught on."
Nyx did hide in the star destroyer's hangar. She mind tricked a storm trooper into piloting a tie-fighter right before the blast doors closed."Focus on making them think its you." The voice instructed. They destroyed that tie-fighter and she could sense the buzz aboard the ship about the Knight's of Ren being one less. She hid cramped and her birth tremors growing."Patience." The voice advised.A supplies freighter came in that night a two man craft with regular pilots from a First Order controlled planet nearby. Carefully she snuck on board convincing the weak-minded pilots to navigate way off their scheduled course to Naboo.
"When I arrived on Naboo they were living in the ruins of the great city. They were all cautious and scared with makeshift weapons to defend themselves against invasion. And my mother…."
The mind controlled pilots aided her descent the pain now gripping her thoroughly. Sosha Soruna stood before the craft, armed with a repaired blaster, aged like an elegant queen should. Her face was firm at first, but upon seeing the circumference of her daughter's stomach it easily melted.
"All the fear I had been bottling up dissipated upon seeing my mother. She forgave me without saying a word, and the voice had been right all along. I had come home and the light within me sparked. I gave birth to my son that night."
Calliope pulled them back to the present Rey's face streaming with tears, "It was a hard birth, and I deserved every bit of agony that came with it. I named him after the man who saved both of our lives."
I hope you all enjoyed this long chapter, cheers!
