Vader Unleashed 004

After acquiring the Chu-Gon Cube, Vader had rushed back to his castle without paying the diminished ghost, or dead laborers a second glance. 

This was it. This was his first step to achieving true power! 

Arriving within the obsidian fortress looming above the seething rivers of lava, the black slab acted as a focus, gathering the Nexus of Darkside energies into a monument of pain, and domination. Inside this megalith dedicated to despair, Vader had entered his private sanctum and breathed in the unfiltered hatred of Mustafar’s wastes. Red light pulsed from embedded Sith runes in the walls, and mechanical arms hung like vultures over an  obsidian slab ready for his operation. 

Operation the ancient artifact, he levitated the Chu-Gon Cube into the air, and harmonized with the foul energies of Mustafar. Channeling the power of the Force-using his body acting as a conduit-he directed the flow into the cube. 

Foreign runes lit up in a crimson deep hue as his imagination entered a mindscape. It was as if he saw a vast, empty, blank canvas. One awaiting his touch. Feeling an instinct or premonition, he ‘brushed’ the area with the Force, and willed a block of Cortosis-Shield plates into existence. The Chu-Gon Cube inhaled the surrounding matter-in this case, air-then spat out the material he had imagined. 

Eying the metal, Vader tried to cut into it with his lightsaber, yet it short fused, proving to him that this was indeed cortosis! 

Having confirmed that his hopes and dreams were alive, that the second set of memories told no lie, Vader began to research this powerful artifact in a frenzy. He would have his suit!

~~~~~~~~~~

A week had passed, and Vader had not slept once as the Force fueled his obsession. 

The air was thick with heat and the tang of scorched metal. Steam coated this already dark room, shrouding it with an aura of mystery. The sound of airtight seals hissed shut, and there, standing in the smoke-wreathed gloom, was Darth Vader. 

He was silent.

Monolithic.

Reborn. 

This was not the suit the Emperor had given him. This is what he made. What he forged not as a prison, but as a weapon.

The new armor gleamed like polished midnight. The servos were sleeker, stronger,  silent. His vision was no longer bound to a ruby-tinted red, color exploded at him from all directions as the hues of the world entered his eyes. The plating was more angular, predatory, designed to strike terror, not merely to protect. The breathing apparatus no longer hissed, it growled, like a war machine dreaming of battle. 

Vader flexed his gauntleted hand. The fingers clenched with unerring precision. No tremor. No flaw. No trace of the man he was. With but a thought, the neural link dampened the sound of his breathing, and all was quiet within his chamber. 

Breathing in great lungfuls of air, Vader felt his new mechanical airways bring fresh oxygen to a mind that hadn't been so clear, so precise in years. 

He opened his mouth to speak, testing his voice modulator. His voice was low, rich: utterly monstrous. 

“This… is strength.”

He slowly turned, surveying his reflection in a shattered piece of transparisteel. The molten glow from the depths of Mustafar licked across his armor like firelight over a blade.

The Force pulsed violently around him, thick as blood in water. Visions rapidly flashed across his mind one after another:

• Fleets burning under his command.

• Jedi & Sith falling to his blade.

• Worlds kneeling before the shadow of his will.

• Bowing ancients begging for mercy

• A pair of Force Sensitive women basking in his dominance, prolonging the Skywalker line

And through it all: power. Unquestioned. Absolute.

“No longer bound by failure. No longer shaped by weakness. I am the fire. I am the forge.”

A tremor ran through the chamber. The ground outside quaked and Mustafar churned in response as if the Darkside itself was stirred by his rebirth.

Walking to the edge of a viewing platform attached to the room, Vader allowed his emotions to rage unchecked, affecting both people and planet alike. 

Outside, the lava boiled and roared beneath him like the wrath of a dying world. Whilst the stormtroopers dressed in white stood at attention, no matter where they were posted. 

“Let the galaxy tremble. Let the Force wail in despair. I have remade myself-not in light like my master had hoped… but in conquest-and this time… there will be nothing left to save.”

Struck by a flash of inspiration, Vader moved on to the next phase of his master plan. Dominating the control of machines through the Force. Mechu-deru. 

Waving his hand at a communicator, the kneeling hologram of his seneschal, Vaneé appeared. 

“Gather my holocrons.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Darth Vader levitated himself, and silently sat in a meditative, monk-like pose. His cape fluttered as he had surrounded himself with disassembled machinery: droids, power cores, and twisted servos. A weathered holocron hovered before him, its surface cracked but still pulsing with dark intent.

A battered astromech was before him, deactivated. Its plating bore old scorch marks, relics of past failures.

Beaten into submission, and threatened with termination, a pained, distant voice spoke through the holocron. 

"Through mechu-deru, the Force bends to command the metal. Circuits become sinew. Code becomes will. Thought becomes control…" On and on the voice droned in the background, transmitting long forgotten lore to Vader’s eager ears. 

He was not idle during this lecture, and put theory into practice. Vader extended his gloved hands. The air tightened as he asserted his will. Loose parts floated around him like they had a thousand times before. The astromech began to shimmer with Force energy, components realigned themselves as if waking from a long slumber, and slotted into place with satisfying snaps. His second set of memories likened this building process with the construction of a Lego set. Vader had to admit, he had experienced a sort of childish glee whilst working on this droid, long buried memories of Anakin Skywalker resurfaced, and of his dream to free himself and his mother from slavery. Harnessing upon the feelings of yearning and pained torture these memories had evoked, he channeled his power through the Force. 

Sparks arced from Vader’s fingers. He spoke in a low, grave tone as he asserted his will: 

“Obey me. Rise.”

The droid levitated, spinning slowly. Its lights blinked back to life, though it was not operating on any physics-based power source. The Force humed around it in the form of a deep, subharmonic note. Vader’s control sharpens. For a moment, he ‘has it.’

“Bee-boo beep borghhauzueh.” The droid came to life, only to fizzle out, and incoherently screech. 

Something had gone catastrophically wrong. 

A ripple.

A pull.

A disturbance.

Vader's hands faltered. The room seemed to shift and bend, as if some unseen gravity took hold of his mind. 

Reeling, he almost lost his balance, yet his new armor automatically stabilized him as he experienced this nearly lethal backlash. Blood dripped down his nose, and the Darkside seemed to laugh at him, as if to mock the boy who had dared fly too close to the sun. 

A moment later, the Force convulsed, not in rebellion, but in warning!

His breath stuttered in its rhythm. His vision narrowed. He saw ‘nothing,’ yet ‘something’ saw him.

A whisper not heard, but ‘felt.’

"You trespass."

His head jerked upward as he searched for the origin of this voice. The holocron trembled, shining a bright pink growing brighter every second until it shattered into a million tiny pieces. The reconstructed droid spasmed violently mid-air, twitching like a marionette under broken strings, its shrieks and wails were legendary. 

Asserting his authority, and holding up a hand towards the ceiling, Vader pushed back with his incontestable will. 

“I command you, reveal yourself!” With his shout, the room shook. 

The disturbance deepened, it was ancient and cold. It was not the Darkside he had come to know when studying the Sith… not entirely. Something different. If he likened it to anything, it was the magicks that the Dathomiri witches employed. 

For a split second, Vader saw a symbol flash into his chambers, then in a flicker, it had vanished. Seared into his memory, he recalled that the thing was an eye carved in rusted metal. Watching.

Shouting in a rage, and unwilling to be toyed with, he sensed where he thinks it will appear next, and ignited his lightsaber. Slashing the air with his will, he cleaves through the astromech, and melts the metal eye, snapping the connection. 

Vader was once more alone. 

Breathing deeply, he trembled in rage. That he was spied upon, yet didn't catch the perpetrator until just now, it drove him to new heights of fury. Knowing his secrets, whoever that was, they had to die. 

Taking in the silence, Vader felt that the presence hadn't fully left. 

How bold. 

He slowly rose to his full height, and clenched his fists, staring into the shadows at something that ‘wasn't’ there, but ‘was.’

“What are you?”

There was no answer, not at first, but what happened next put Vader on guard. This was no simple foe. 

The shadows around Vader seem to lengthen, and the edges of the room blurred, as if space itself recoiled from the presence now seeping in.

Vader turned slowly towards the corner furthest from his current position. The temperature began to drop, and impossibly, permafrost begins to coat the air. The lava’s glow beyond the windows dimmed, not physically, but perceptually, it had been eclipsed by a presence stretching across the Force like the cold fingers of a stranger caressing the back of your neck! 

From the darkest corner of the chamber, a voice slithered forward. Velvet and rust. Ancient, feminine, and regal. 

“You reach into old veins, metal-thing… veins that bleed not for you.”

The Force thickened as an oppressive air coated the room, yet Vader was undeterred. Here within his fortress, within this focus, he was in his element. Not even the Emperor would dare face him alone whilst enhanced by the fiery pits of Mustafar. 

Facing the corner, there was nothing that his enhanced optical visors could detect, but he felt her.

“I shall not repeat myself.” Vader slowly demanded, his voice carried with it an aura of command. 

A low hum, neither a laugh nor a growl, but a resonance between the two spilled forth from that shadowed corner. 

“I am the ash that clothed the first kings. The scream beneath the black glass. I ruled this world long before your kind fell from the stars.”

A form began to coalesce in the dark: a shape like a woman in tattered robes of obsidian threads, her face was hidden beneath a crown of fused bone and metal. Eyes like smoldering coals were encapsulated in blue, hypnotic fire. 

She stood without standing, her presence was projected through sheer will and mastery over the Darkside. 

Vader remained silent, analyzing her form, searching for weakness. He was more than happy to let the old thing prattle so long as he could watch her pitiful expression when he crushed her like all the rest. 

 “Witch-Queen of Mustafar they called me. The Sith carved citadels atop my bones. The Jedi burned them to hide what they could not kill. Now another pretender comes to my world, my Mustafar, wearing both their chains… and he thinks himself a master?”

“Anointing oneself with grand titles, and provocative words denote one who is afraid. He who shouts the loudest, has the most to lose. You are without substance.” Vader dismissed. 

The shadowed Force projection leaned forward slightly. Not offended, but amused.

 “You kneel in my shadow, clawing at secrets you cannot bind. Mechu-deru is no tool. It is a covenant. A pact with what sleeps beneath the surface. You Sith think yourselves so clever, thinking yourselves innovators, when in reality, all your best ideas are pirated from others, or inspired by the Je'daii! Behold.”

Her hand lifted, and the shattered droid began to twitch. For a moment, it rose again, not by Vader’s will, but hers! 

It spoke in a series of beeps and boops, yet Vader understood each and every one of them. 

“You are strong, machine-lord. But strength without permission… is intrusion.”

Vader’s grip began to tighten as he registered the threat, and response to his provocation. The Force swelled around him, and the chamber groaned as he brought his psychic might to bear. 

“You do not frighten me.” Vader said in a low, and venomous tone. 

“No. But I delay you. I weaken you. The Great Dark has layers, and you are far from the deepest.” The Witch-Queen lightly mocked, glancing at the shattered remains of the holocron. 

To demonstrate her mastery over mechu-deru, she casually gestured towards the droid. Collapsing into itself this time, instead of being repaired, it began to melt, becoming a super heated pile of slag.

After this act, the Witch-Queen's projection began to fade, her voice stretched out one last time as her presence withdrew. Her final words were a bone chilling threat built upon eons of victories. 

“When next you bleed into the circuits… remember: you draw breath in a graveyard.”

Like that, she was gone. 

The shadows recede. The lava brightens once more, as if exhaling after holding its breath.

Vader remained still, the blood dripping from his nostrils had entered his mouth, and he tasted copper. 

The Sith holocron-his key to unlocking the secrets of machinery-lied broken at his feet. His gauntlets sparked faintly, the hint of electricity coated his mechanical fingertips, yet disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. The mechu-deru ritual was broken.

Again.

Turning wordlessly to the door, he strode down the hallways towards the hangar. 

The so-called Witch-Queen's signature in the Force was like a lighthouse, arrogantly daring him to break himself upon her rocks. Sensing that she was positioned in the northern hemisphere, it was clear as day what he had to do. They would soon see who broke whom. 

“All troops, gather on my position. Mustafar shall yield by the end of the day, or they shall become one with the Force.” 

That, Vader promised, was a certainty. 

~~~~~~~~~~

AN: The conquest, of Mustafar, and secrets of mechu-deru are nigh!