Chapter 50
Milaea
Enough – she had had enough. Enough thinking, enough worrying, enough deciding, enough caring…
The pressure that had been building in her exploded in the form of her amethyst blade smashing into his green sabre as she leapt down on him, the shockwave pushed out what few fragments of transparisteel remained in the windows and cracked the columns. She landed into a slurry of Kimars blood and limbs, having to use the force to keep a grip on the slick floor.
Their blades moved with inhuman speed and polish, combined with cyclopean releases of energy that left the room itself shaking in fear. He threw everything at her, lighting, fire, illusions, gravity fluctuations, mental attacks, an incessant push and pull of the force…and she threw it all back at him.
The Gods clashed upon the spire with blades of pure energy that moved faster than mortal eyes could trace, Amethyst and Emerald merging into pure white with heat and speed.
With each blow, each crushing push and pull on the Force that underlay all reality the entire Temple buckled and shook, demi-gods of incalculable power unleashed their all against each other, bodies bathed in shields of fire and lighting that churned in conflict, the excess overflowing through the empty windows and eating away the stone. The Pinnacle of the Temple was lit for millions to see in an eerie arcane purple, blue and white glow that rivalled the coming dawn in radiance.
He repressed his power to create a null field as her blade smashed into his downward guard, it was a strange sensation and gave him a moment of advantage to put her on the defensive…but the aether was ubiquitous…even in this anti she could feel the thinnest of tendrils to fight back, he staggered as he had to revert back taking a hard kick to the ribs.
As she had with Jarys, she matched his every blow with equal strength, the ceiling ripping and tearing as three dimensional space itself was damaged by their aetheric blows, the floor collapsing under the weight of their blows forcing them to levitate to remain upright. .
As she had with Odjina she reached for the power within herself rather than the force about her, her movement’s and powers melded as graceful reflections of the rhythm of her heart and minds.
As she had with Kiraea, she adapted…no not just adapted, pre-empted techniques, learning and mastering before they rose to Valens consciousness, abilities she had never imagined became as a familiar as walking, the encyclopaedic repertoire of her opponent countered and used in equal measure.
Kimars sabre was teleported, switched on and off all over the room as they vied for its advantage until it finally disintegrated the molecular structure fractured from the strain. Aetheric blasts to shatter points fragmented his armour, at any one time there were illusions of three then six of each of them spinning in the dance.
The room itself started to fall apart, chairs dissolved into atoms, the floor eaten away by invisible energies, the lighting and fire coalescing into a plasma of dynamically opposing energies that would’ve vaporized lesser beings.
She pressed forward against him…like her he wasn’t as he had been…he was an amalgam of the reticent genius and solider Valance, the foil of her former self the lustful energetic Aethena, and the child Valens raised by the unyielding old Andis as she had been by the open caring Soryu.
As the sabres twirled and energies flew his image became distorted, green sabre to red, to white…The White Jedi, ever more defensive pivoted away from the Red Goddess as they fought in an ever shifting scene, from the Temple, to the Valley on Aethas, the caves of Vyth, the tombs of Korriban, the bridge of an enormous space station….
She realised she wasn’t even fighting any more, she was watching this pair fight…each one an image of what she could become.
On the right the White Jedi, beautiful but aged, red hair sprinkled with grey tightly bound above the white and grey robes of a Grand Master. She looked at her legacy…a thousand years of peace and prosperity for the Republic, trillions who cried out in terror rescued, the Hutts brought to heel, the green faced Insidious would-be Emperor and his Muun master destroyed by her hand before their schemes could draw breath.
The White Jedi parried and drove her silver blade in a deep cut through the Red Goddess breast plate.
But the price of peace was etched in the sad lines that creased her older face…the genocide of her own people…there could be no negotiation with them…she would try and fail to convince each one to surrender or leave...but in the end she would be forced to kill them all…the last of her people, the scion of a Republic that was everything Soryu had dreamed it should be and more, yet utterly alone, no one her equal none could be her lover…such sacrifice and still the Pax-Republica would collapse within a decade of her death…
The White Jedi Pressed the Red Goddess hard, but the fight evened out as her gaze turned from her.
She turned toward the Red Goddess, hair loose and flowing golden red, her face immaculate, young, feminine, beauty that time could never diminish…behind her another legacy…fleets of oblivion black war ships and soldiers in matching armour with death hungry void blades that sung of un-disrupted victory. Valens her strategist directed Jarys her unstoppable fist with deathly precision as Kiraea and her spies stalked ahead burning civilizations from within before the main force arrived…
The Red Goddess unleashed blazing red-white fire cindering the edges of the White Jedi’s robes.
Her people reborn into the unstoppable Army of the Aether, the Jedi, the Gray, the Sith and a thousand other force cultures would resist…for a time…all inevitably crushed - Yoda, Soryu, High Sentinel Yshrrk and others…a Falleen, a plain looking business man, a woman with purple lips with dead fingers around a shattered Crystal, and an Anzat, his human brother in arms and blue Twi’lek lover all broken and bloodied beneath Midnight black boots - their techniques, knowledge and Wisdom absorbed and adapted one by one into a single all-encompassing Aetheric Art of War.
This was the choice, how would she use her power, what Legacy would she embrace…
Would she become the White Jedi Soryu, her father in all but blood had longed to see and restore the Republic…or the Red Goddess Valens, the new incarnation of her erstwhile brother and lover, longed to see reborn and raise the Aethans from the brink of extinction to all consuming power.
The battle was evenly matched, a thousand worlds, Korriban, Vyth, Coruscant, Cygrat, Dantoonie, Corellia, Chandrilla, Yavin, Galtea, M’Tzigon…all flashed in the distance as Red and White vied for conquest.
No.
They stopped dead…frozen in time but for slight flickers of temporal distortion.
She stepped between them.
She was not the White Jedi, who would slay her people, deny her heritage, and worst of all deny her own desires to create a perfect but fleeting galaxy wide peace for everyone else. She would not sacrifice her own happiness for the many…she was too much an Aethan to do that.
She was not the Red Goddess, who would create Legions of soldiers and allow Valens, Jarys and Kiraea - the last and worst of the old Aethan society - free reign to satiate their thirst for vengeance upon countless trillions. She would not have the Aethans reborn only to ravage the galaxy in an orgy of genocidal bloodlust…she was too much a Jedi for that.
Her sabre was in her hand, the amethyst glow coloured the White Jedi’s robes a regal purple, and cast ever darker deep shadows on the Red Goddess blood armour. Their bodies static, their eyes moved to behold her between them, each pleading to be made Real.
She raised her sabre high and with one sweep decapitated them both.
****************************************************************************
The winds howled through the wreck of the council chamber as the first flickers of dawn began to emerge between the skyscrapers. The Night of Madness as historians would call it was over….its Legacy would never end.
Valens was on his knees before her, his armour gone, blown to dust that littered the floor by Shatter-point blasts, his body bruised and cut beyond what any human could survive. Still he stared at her with one eye, the other bruised over, the question in the aether…what is your choice. He had made his long ago, she was herself the legacy of that choice - faced with the annihilation of his people he had sought their gene forged Goddess Aethena…to create Milaea.
She could see it now…Valens was obsessive but no fool…Aethena as she was could never thrive in this galaxy…he needed someone who was committed to the Aethans, understood the galaxy, and had the Goddess extreme power to rebuild them.
He was a strategic genius….but she could not allow him to lead the Aethans any longer, nor kill could she kill him for he was of her People and the only one who could ever match her, a check on her own power. She grasped him with the aether and poured out red lighting
His bruises subsided, his cuts bound and healed, Aethena had done this to Valance in another life, it had bound him to her just as much as their shared origin and sexual relationship had. Now she used the same method to assert her power over him…he was free…but like the tusk-cat of Naboo who had the thorn in his paw removed by a Princess - he could never forget nor cease to repay the debt from her holding his life in her hand and letting him keep it for a second time.
Three ships rumbled into view outside shattered chamber, one was the Andis, one emblazoned with Painting of a Vorynx breaking from chains, the other a sleek craft that she barely recognised as Chiss, so rare were they.
Her people were on those ships. The Vorynx ship pivoted and a side door opened, Kiraea stood there, mostly healed, a blaster to Sofa’s head. A mere thought in the Aether and Milaea made Kiraea lower it, the threat of her withheld love forcing Kiraea into submission.
Behind her boots crunched on the few remaining pieces of shattered marble -Jarys - she sensed, her biological father…the man her mother had wished to come and save them so many times as she sang her to sleep…astounded at the scene worried for both his brother and his daughter, silently praying to his Goddesses they were reconciled and he would not have to choose between them.
He didn’t need to worry, Her choice was made.
She turned toward the Vorynx, the unspoken balances of dominance and submission shifting in the deep aetheric meld that their people always shared and mingling with communal relief and excitement at reunion with their lost sister….after so much death…so much worry and tension she couldn’t resist letting herself reciprocate the positive feelings.
“We’re finished here,” she said as she leapt across the gap to the ship, folding space to take it in a single bound.
“For now,”
****************************************************************************
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
****************************************************************************
THE END
LEGACY OF THE AETHER
Credits-
>>Thanks to Ultra Sabers for this amazing Forum and Amazing Sabres...one day I hope to have a Sabre for every main character!
>>Thanks to all my co-writers (in no particular order)<<
Karmack - for lighting the spark for these stories with We Are Gray, and collaborating to make the Vyth/Odjina and Spire Arcs possible at all.
Dutchman - for unfailing enthusiasm for collaboration and willingness to combine our canons even more closely through Schisms.
Taegin Rowhan - always the first to say directly who you do and don't like and why, very helpful and did contribute to how JArys and Soryu's arcs played out.
Illiyss - beautiful chapter summaries and insightful analysis
The Drunken Consular - for showing how effective simple short chapters can be in Brothers
My appreciation for all your comments and support, they all contribute to future chapters and the writing process, and for just reading! without an audience this would not be possible, and the fantastic works you are producing - it all pushes me to make my own stories worthy to sit along side yours and entertain/inspire you as much as your stories entertain/inspire me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
