[Short Stories] - Dark Emperor 6(17)

The ring of fiery spears finally caught Palpatine’s attention. The power of the dark side raged within him, and he longed to release it against his attackers. First, an energy shield against the spears, then a wave of Force lightning to drive them all back. Finally, the Force Storm to descend and savage them. But nothing was happening. The dark side was not answering his commands. All it seemed to want to do was to claim him. The Jedi continued to advance until he was at the points of more than two hundred spears. The shining weapons were very long, and their collective light nearly blinded him. But he could still see the forms of the Jedi holding them. Among the Jedi attackers were Kenobi, Anakin, and Yoda! Impossible! Was everything they had told him a lie? Had he really been fooled so utterly? He had only a moment to fix his hateful gaze on Anakin before the spear points moved forward and entered him.

Every part of him was pierced, but he knew at once they were not natural spears. They did not slice his flesh. They slid into him without a single cut. The spirit weapons were not even tools of destruction! They were instruments of healing! They attacked Palpatine’s darkness. Impaled on so many lances of light, he was lit up from within. His body became translucent and revealed the conflicting forces inside him. The light spears treated the darkness as an infection to be rooted out and destroyed with complete thoroughness. The energies of the dark side broke upon those spears, fragmented, and were cast out like escaping wraiths.

Above Palpatine, the great black vortex spun. As his dark side power was cut away, it rose like fire and smoke into the lightning-ringed whirlpool. The dark realm fed ravenously, absorbing and reclaiming every shred of the shadow that flew free of its former servant. Palpatine had often wondered if the dark side was a sentient, living energy, or merely an aspect of the galactic energy field. He had never been able to learn the answer. Nor could the assembled Jedi discern its true nature. All they could understand was that it took back the darkness which they carved away, and took it back with frightening strength.

The vortex continued to hurl down lightning bolts. Some of the Jedi were struck and fell away, their spears vanishing as they collapsed. But there were more than enough remaining to complete the task.

For Palpatine, the experience was profoundly painful. Layers of his very soul were being sliced away. He no longer saw the Jedi surrounding him. Vivid visions came to him, depicting the parts of him that were being lost…

…he saw himself holding his lightsaber at the throat of a beaten Luke Skywalker, then the scene burned away, and even the memory of it was gone.

…he saw himself laughing as the adept’s city of Velarium was ripped apart by his first Force Storm. Then that, too, fled and was consumed.

…he saw himself unleashing the Force lightning that would have killed Luke Skywalker on the second Death Star. Then it was gone. It had never existed.

…he saw himself awash in the power of the dark side after the destruction of the planet Alderaan…but that event, too, departed forever.

…he saw himself with the Holocron of Ashka Boda, willing his death and making his first transition into a clone body…and the experience itself was taken from him.

…he saw himself directing the Purge of the Jedi from the Palace on Coruscant. The spears amputated that part of his life, too.

…he saw himself declaring himself the Emperor of the Galaxy. The memory was sheared mercilessly away.

…he saw himself using the Force to lower the helmet onto the head of a kneeling Darth Vader. Gone, cut away.

…he saw himself engineering the fall of the Republic as President of the Senate. Extinguished.

…he saw himself learning the secrets of the dark side from the remnants of the Sith order. Lost.

…and at last he saw himself as a boy, taken from his father by the Sith and chosen by the dark side to be its greatest servant. The last of the darkness to depart into the portal was that which had been bestowed long ago on that day of choosing.

This final memory was the last thing Palpatine saw. The portal descended, and his body was surrounded by a tornado like storm of darkness. The force of it threw back the surrounding Jedi and blew many of them off their feet. The whirlwind spun tightly, dizzyingly around him, swallowing him completely. Then it began to climb upwards again. The vortex began to slow. The lightning bolts ceased to rain down. Gradually, the ground stopped shaking. The aching void in the sky began to shrink. Slowly, the black circle diminished until it was the size of a pinpoint, present, but no longer visible. The silver sky had returned to normal, and beneath it, draped in robes far too large for him, was a young boy.

He was a pale child, with a serious face. He had a head full of messy, light colored hair, and his unusual yellow eyes cast about in bewilderment. The woman at Brand’s side stepped from the circle then, and approached the boy with her arms outstretched. Tears fell freely down her face, and she looked overwhelmed with passionate relief. Kneeling before the confused and frightened child, she held out her arms to embrace him. Trembling, he fell into her embrace.