Vader's Reckoning

The air on Mustafar always seemed to be choking to Darth Vader, but that was nothing in comparison to the burning of his own flesh under the armor. His mechanical breathing system hissed and wheezed as he leaned over the lava river's edge, observing the workers labor. Construction on his castle had commenced, however, it seemed to be progressing too slowly. This was no normal endeavor. It was not stone and mortar that he was building. It was the meaning of his very existence.

Even then, many years before the Empire, many years before the wars in the galaxy and the fall of the Republic, his castle—his home—would stand like an iron fist. Never would anything alter that.

Mustafar, its rivers of fire and obsidian plains so razor-sharp they might cut, was not a welcoming world for life. And yet, he had claimed it as home. He had made it his. This world would be where his journey of return, his rebirth, his reclaiming what was lost started.

"Lord Vader," a voice behind him interrupted his daydreaming. It was that of a man in black robes, one of the project supervisors. The man's voice shook a little, but otherwise was under his control. He had learned the price of disrespect to Vader, though perhaps too late.

Vader did not turn. He didn't need to. He was sufficient by just being there. "What is it?" he growled, his tone low and abrasive, sounding like the whine of a dying star.

"The workers are nearing the second tier of the foundation, my lord. However, we've encountered difficulties with the rock formations at the east side. It will delay progress by several standard days."

Vader's knuckles were tight against his thigh. He hadn't been surprised—nothing in the Empire went according to design. Nothing on Mustafar ever had. Surely nothing in this century would either.

"See that it is done," he ordered brusquely, half-turning his head, the black cape flowing behind him like a dark pool. His voice was warning enough.

The overseer nodded quickly and withdrew. No one would cross him, not for long. In fact, Vader did not have time for that delay, but the castle would be built. He would make certain of it himself if necessary. The castle would be a reminder of what he was now—both literal and figurative sanctuary that would remind the galaxy of his dominance. His thoughts turned then, to once upon a time. To the past he had abandoned in another galaxy, another era.

Luke Skywalker. His son.

He had never witnessed the boy develop. He had not been present when the child first ever used a lightsaber, or started to show the Force in ways that were close approximations of Vader's own abilities. That must be rectified. But not now, he told himself. He had further goals to fulfill before he could return to the future and have time with his son.

Vader's body was on fire like an iron cage, and it was becoming more intolerable by the second. The armor, which was once his symbol of invincibility, had become a coffin. It wasn't the armor that irked him. It was the weakness that lay behind it, the rough edges of a fractured man, a man who was once Anakin Skywalker.

The suit held him up, yes. It shielded him from the pain that would one day belong to him if he ever exited it for a moment. But it wasn't sufficient.

No longer.

This time—this bizarre turn of events that had brought him here, to this past age—had left something inside him open. A crack, a spark of hope that he had not permitted himself to indulge in for years. This was not his time. He did not belong. And yet…

This was his opportunity.

Not just to go back to the galaxy he knew, to his son, but to reclaim something precious. His physical peak. His strength. The man he used to be. Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One.

Vader's eyes tightened as he turned to glance at the half-built tower standing behind him. The spires of black, the steel, the burned stone—all a reminder of what he was, but they would also be the start of something better. Something that would re-make him, piece by piece. Until that time, the shattered pieces of his body would have to suffice. But time would pass, and soon, he would be re-made whole.

He would take what was his from this period. He would take strength. He would regain his form.

And then, when he was ready—when the castle was finished and his strength re-established—he would return to his son.

But not yet.

Vader's fist clenched. Laborers worked their jobs beneath him, unaware they were constructing power they labored, the foundation upon which they toiled, not the castle itself, but a coming again of a deity.

Mustafar heat closed in around him, stifling, and yet a lesser thing compared to rage, compared to hunger, bubbling deep within of him.

Darth Vengean's death had been nothing. The snap of his will—a tightening of the Force around the fool's throat—and done. No ritual. No great battle. No fight. The Sith of this time were strong, to be sure, but they were ignorant. They plotted and schemed, the one shadowing the other like famished akk dogs, thinking that their hushed betrayals and their cruelty were the pinnacle of power.

They had no concept of real power. Not as he did.

And now they were his to order around.

The Dark Council had been divided in their reaction to the death of Vengean. Some had welcomed it eagerly, seeing the natural order of the Sith. Some had fumed in secret, weighing their own ambition, considering whether they too would one day feel the secret hand of his clutch. None of them—not one—had dared to oppose him. Even the Emperor himself had not pushed the matter.

That was where they differed.

Vader did not have to bow to power. He was power.

And yet, and yet, he would not sit at their table, play their games. Mustafar was where he was for the time being, where his castle would hold sway, where his mind could concentrate on what was important. He had defeated the Republic once already. He had killed the Jedi.

But that was then. Another life.

And now, with the whine of the Force in his ears, with the pressure of his weight on his bones like a rusty cage, he had a new purpose.

To be made whole again.

The armor kept him alive, but it sapped him too. He could feel it—his arms swinging stiffly like machinery, rather than the loose motions he was used to. He remembered the sensation of moving lightly across the field of battle, of blocking a hundred blaster shots on sheer reflex alone, of being indestructible. That was what he'd lost.

And that was what he'd get back.

But in the meantime…

There was never any lack of tasks to be performed.

A metallic ring echoed from the communicator on his wrist.

He stroked it with a sweep of his gloved hand.

"My lord," said the voice of the now Imperial officer—one of his newest, another man who had but just learned to address him without stuttering. "The targets have been found."

"Where?" Vader's voice was a rumble, filtered through the mask.

"The Outer Rim, my lord. A Jedi stronghold. We have it recorded that at least five Jedi are present inside the walls of a derelict temple."

Vader remained there quietly to begin with, taking it in. His mind flashed back. To the temples of the Jedi. To the blood he used to shed under the watchful gaze of Coruscant's skyscraping towers.

It had been so simple.

Yet that was not the reason he was interested in this.

The Jedi were a plague, an ancient disease that would not die. That much would never change. But now, they had something he required.

Their knowledge.

Their secrets.

Their way back.

The dark side would suffice to sustain him, to give him energy, but he wanted more than that. He wanted to recreate what was lost. The Jedi selfishly retained their knowledge, their ancient rites and forgotten arts, for themselves. If there was any way of reclaiming what was lost, they would be the ones who would know.

And so, in a sense, he assumed that he should be thankful.

They had spared him the effort of seeking.

They had all gathered in one location.

Like beasts to the slaughter.

Vader turned, descending from his perch, his heavy boots ringing off the dark stone of the unfinished fortress. His workers winced as he strode past, their heads downcast, their breathing shallow.

Good.

They should be afraid of him.

"Prepare my ship," he instructed. "I am departing for the Outer Rim."

The officer delayed for a moment before speaking. "Understood, my lord."

Vader ended the communicator with a wave of his fingers.

Yes. His trip back to the past had not been planned. A bend in the wind. A cruel joke, maybe, from the Force.

But it didn't matter.

He had always been a man who learned to adapt. Who endured.

And now, in this era of scattered Jedi and forgotten knowledge, he did see potential.

Fists clenched at his sides.

Before he returned to his own timeline, before he laid eyes on his son, before he reclaimed the future—

He would reclaim himself.

And first step to that?

Crushing the Jedi.

For fun.

The roar of the engines vibrated through the deck of Darth Vader's personal starship, a vessel that he'd ordered to fulfill all his needs, streamlined and powerful as an organ of his own flesh. He could feel the readiness of the ship without even needing to look at the controls. The cold, clinical whir of the machinery was a familiar one, one to which he had become used in his exile. As the ship glided out of Mustafar's atmosphere, he allowed his mind to wander for a moment. The stars glinted before him, their bright points etching an infinite trail into the black depth of hyperspace.

Vader took himself a moment of silence, letting the hum of the power of the ship engulf him. The hyperspace buzz was something not many could ride without losing their minds. The velocity, the warping of space and time, would drive most mad. But Vader, no. There was a focus in it, a thought that he could just choose to float and be there. His own thoughts, far more attuned to the Force than any other's, absorbed the magnitude of hyperspace, attuning himself with the turbulent swirl of energy about him. The cosmos itself genuflected at his will at this moment, and he savored it. He didn't need much—only the sense of motion, the silence, and the certainty that he was on a quest.

But there had been a crossing of his field of sight, a shadow on his screens. He winced his eye shuttering tightly, his mechanized breathing rhythmical but resolute. A massive vessel, a Harrower-class dreadnought, drifting in hyperspace by himself. A ship that size did not belong here, much less without escort, and it stood directly in front of him.

Vader sensed a tingle of his senses, the Force echoing through his mind. He remembered something of the ship, the unease constricting his chest. There was a power aboard the ship that was indistinguishable but non-delusory—a power he did not want to rule out. In haste, he blasted out his starship in pursuit of the dreadnought.

Coming up on the Harrower-class dreadnought, space around it seemed to ripple. Space bore down upon him as if this vessel, this cursed vessel, had a mind of its own. The vacuum in the air was oppressive, abnormal. Something was not right.

Spilling in with little fanfare, he stepped into the frigid, deserted corridors of the massive ship. His boots made no sound on the metallic decks, the thrum of the ship's systems idling hard producing only the heavy silence. His own breathing caught in the small ring, its echo magnified by the emptiness that surrounded him. The Force was driving him on, a tug, a pulling sensation that pulled him along. The air was off—it was heavy, it was ugly, as if the ship itself was shadowed by some presense which was dead. It was the kind of environment one might find at the start of a horror novel, something in which the danger was not visible but was felt with great intensity.

Vader's prosthetic arm went around the grip of his lightsaber as he moved through corridors. With each step, it seemed to unsettle the air the more. Intentionally, he proceeded forward, yet that eerie sensation teased him. As he moved into a spacious room in the middle of the ship, that sensation grew greater. It was no ghost, no phantom. It was older. It was more deadly.

And then he saw it.

A Starweird, its grotesque form slithering through the blackness, its long tendrils wrapping around the walls like some foul expression of an ancient terror. Its eyes glowed bright with knowledge and fear, blazing directly at Vader as if knowing something it was not supposed to. The monster, a twisted remnant of the dark beyond, was frozen in a moment of pure horror. It recognized him instantly—the Dark Lord of the Sith, an aura that radiated power and command.

The mind of the Starweird howled at him, a wave of telepathic agony, but never achieved its peak. Before it could scream out that scream that would shatter the minds of lessened beings, the creature's eyes grew wide with horror. It froze. The Force fluctuated about Vader, and the Starweird, feeling his dominance, retreated in abject terror. Not waiting another second, the beast turned and fled, slithering into the crevices of the ship's structure, vanishing into the darkness of space.

Vader stayed still, allowing it to disappear from sight, the echo of the creature's fear still lingering in the air. He didn't move, didn't need to. The presence of such a creature had been a nuisance. It had had the temerity to think that it was something that would even approach threatening him, but it had realized the reality. Vader was not to be disobeyed.

With a final, scornful glance at the point where the Starweird had vanished, he turned on his heel and headed for the airlock. The ship, in its desolation, seemed to exhale its sigh of relaxation, its own unnatural vitality dissipating into the quiet of space. Whatever vitality there had been would no longer take this place, and the ship would remain sealed in its perpetual solitude.

Vader's starship glowed in the distance, ready for him to return. He boarded without turning around. He had no desire to stay aboard this hunk of a vessel anymore. His goal still ahead of him, The Jedi Enclave. But with this encounter done with, now more than ever he felt calm at his center. The Starweird was a distraction, an impediment cleared without ever breaking a sweat.

With a final look at the stars in front of him, Vader engaged the hyperdrive, the vessel rushing into the churning currents of hyperspace once again. The journey went on, the feeling of strength increasing within him, knowing that nothing in this galaxy—nothing—would ever be able to prevent him. Not the Sith, Not the Jedi, not the Starweird, and certainly not the horror that infested this derelict ship.

The fear that Vader had unleashed was his to control, and he was not about to let it subside now.