Palpatine vs. Valkorion Fanfiction
This was an unusually tenacious one.
He had expected some measure of trembling, fear, dread. True, there had been many enemies who had boasted and puffed before his presence, but Valkorion was fooled not by outward gestures. He could see into their hearts, and in their hearts, even the grandest Jedi and Sith secretly wished fervently with every fiber of their being that they had rather never been born than be before the Emperor as an enemy. For they knew what awaited them; an eternity of suffering as a disembodied prisoner in his being.
Yet Sidious's crackled laughter displayed no such deception. Beyond his shell Valkorion saw nothing but a dark, terrifying blackness, a whirling vortex of the dark side of the Force. A walking embodiment of the dark side that would no sooner kneel before the Eternal Emperor than play politics with an amoeba. Powerful.
A threat.
Sidious's bellowing laughter eventually faded, and he finally spoke. "You have grown old and naive, Valkorion." No amusement was present in his tone, merely condescension. "Fool. You were a powerful Sith in your time, but you have been surpassed. You have become a relic."
Valkorion slowly turned his back to Sidious in the meanwhile, hoping to bide time for his attack and he carefully weighed his options. However much power this Sith embodied, Valkorion still sat near his Eternal Throne, on the strongest nexus of the dark side to have ever existed, twisted and corrupted through sorcery to add to only the power of his own - and drain the power of all others. He only needed to stall.
"Do not try to play games with me." Darth Sidious then began to draw out his words in a high pitched, disturbing melody. "You may not stall your inevitable suffering - yes, you wanted to stall, did you not? Your thoughts betray you Lord Vitiate. And now, you too, will die."
Valkorion had neither the desire nor ability to wait any longer. He swiftly spun around to face Sidious and threw his hands around, unleashing all of the energies he had been quietly gathering for weeks leading to the confrontation in the form of a pure expression of the dark side. Brilliant, purple lightning flashed across the space between the two vessels of the dark, the screams and hatred of the thousands of Jedi and Sith and trillions of sentient beings from which the lightning drew echoing into chaos.
The walls and floor of the station burned and crumbled. Smoke appeared, masking the charred remains of the Throne. And for the first time, the reserved Valkorion let out a guffaw of sheer relief and joy. It was a laughter so fierce, he doubled over in pain, unable to control his bliss. No, there was no sith to compare to the Eternal Emperor. He was unchallenged, and would remain so, forever.
In the meanwhile, Valkorion wished not to merely kill Palpatine - that would be too merciful, and a waste of perfectly good Force power. He probed into the fog, reaching his vision into Chaos, seeking to capture Sidious's spirit and pull it into the claws of agony. With Palpatine within his own spirit, railing against eternal agony, Valkorion's power would grow to unimaginable heights. One step closer to challenging the Anchorite.
He reached into the Force. Instead, he sensed a singularity of the dark side. Alive, amused, and merciless. Palpatine.
Valkorion did not wait, did not hesitate. His reflexes had improved over years of war - he immediately flung a blast of lightning from his fingertips - only to see a faint shadow of a specter dance around his periphery. When he spun, he was stopped midway by an unbearable force constricting his neck.
The force turned him ever so slightly to the left, where he stared in horror at the face of Darth Sidious.
"I will kill you, Lord Valkorion. But your suffering is just beginning."
Valkorion threw everything he had ever learned at The Shadow. Dark tentacles wrapped themselves around Sidious's form, but fell off with no effect. Beasts of pure dark side energy were eviscerated as soon as they materialized. Brilliant blasts of the dark side smashed against Sidious but bounced aside affecting nothing.
"You know nothing of the dark side of the Force. I will grant you the experience of the true harbinger of darkness."
And so Valkorion's last mortal moments were of a massive, terrifying giant of a creature, appearing as a deformed owl taller than the entire station, scorched in blackness and descending upon Valkorion's figure. The Eternal Emperor let out a scream and a cry for mercy before being engulfed in darkness.
He was nothing against The Shadow. Valkorion faced the grand being of evil. The most powerful Sith Lord to have ever lived. The dark side incarnate. He was nothing, and doomed from the start.
Valkorion feared death as much as any being. Now, he knew that he would never experience the immortality he had wished for. But, perhaps he could summon a few pieces of tranquility from this rage. As his spirit faded, he solaced in his long years of life. He would not live forever, but he had lived long, and now would enjoy the blissful surrender of death.
As if reading his thoughts, Palpatine - as if his mortal name suited the sentient swirl of the Force he had become - echoed a cruel laughter. "Did I not tell you that your suffering would not end?"
And so Valkorion did not feel his soul dissipate into the mist. He instead felt it held together by the will of Palpatine. Then he exploded into agony. Pure, unadulterated, infinite pain. Yet he did not lose his sanity - Palpatine was sure of that. The spirit that was once Valkorion felt unimaginable torment and retained the wits to contemplate his fate. How long had passed since the last happy thought of his mortal life, a brief candle of happiness before the long eternity of damnation? A hundred years? Ten thousand? A trillion? He did not know, nor did he have the time to consider it. For now his world was the inner mind of Darth Sidious, and the torture from which he would draw his power. Eternal darkness.
