Okay now we’re done. EDIT: I rewrote everything for a third time, for reasons explained after the chapter.
Thank you again to Tharash/Aristheron, who allowed me to use his character and mangle his story into something entirely new, who beta-read from Chapter 31 to 33, and helped shape the rest of the story arc strategically, and gave me advice through all these years of writing. He made it exponentially better from my first drafts and inspired me a lot. Without him this final, most original arc would have fallen flat.
Part 38: Perchance to Scheme
It had been six months. Six long months since his Ascension, and yet they had flown by in a tearing hurry. He didn’t want to talk about all the times he’d nearly died again some more, but he was still very much alive, to the disappointment of many people. Some of those people he had eliminated himself, or arranged for their demise, both to get back at them and to make life easier. And every day that he lived, he grew stronger.
Aristheron was still there, and Akuliina, and he found himself working closely with both of them, especially Akuliina. It was… fun. The Empire had had far too many crises in such a short time, crises that the three young Sith had been called on to quell together – to be sure, any nation went through periods of great turmoil periodically, any cursory glance at the past would show that. It was just very good luck for him that he happened to be in power during such a time.
He swivelled his chair so he could look out of the window of his grand office high in the Sith Sanctum, putting his feet up on the right wing of his desk. His hands were steepled across his chest as he contemplated both the never-ending thunderstorm of Kaas City and his next moves. He really didn’t like Darth Aruk over in the Ministry of Philosphy, and the feeling was mutual. But it wasn’t time to pull him down yet. Far better to infiltrate the other Ministries, the other Spheres, and plant resources to prepare for his ultimate goal.
I mean, who really expects the librarian to be the terrorist? he asked himself, inwardly amused at both the over-simplification of his duties and the way they hid his true nature. He rather thought he’d been doing well at proving himself to the Empire, setting himself up as ‘helpful, but not to be crossed’, pretending his only agenda was to learn his place as quickly as possible lest the others kill him for incompetence. Which was a little bit true, but any subservience they detected from him was an act; he’d submit to no one ever again. When he got better at his job, he’d switch his open hidden agenda to bickering with Aruk. Let them think that such a petty rivalry was all the danger he could muster towards them.
His messages inbox beeped in the tone that indicated it was a message from his cult. He almost tuned it out, but after a minute more, turned back to his desk and checked it.
It was a forwarded message… from Ashara.
Hey! What’s up? It’s been a while! I’ve heard you’re keeping busy with Aristheron while I’m away. I hope you’re not being mean to too many people. I miss you, do you wanna hang out and catch up? Maybe on Commenor again? Let me know the next time you’re out that way and I’ll get the Rurouni to stop by! We’ll actually be in the area in a few days, but I know it’s short notice and I don’t know where you’re at and you’re probably stupid busy as usual. But I wanted to take the opportunity to say hi anyway, since it’s been a while. Hope you’re doing well!
Love, Ashara
He flattened his hands against the desk, trying to contain the uncontainable – the spark of Light within him welling up in unexpected joy, cutting through all his dark schemes with a pure happiness and delight that only she could bring out in him, even now. He missed her terribly, and… she didn’t hate him.
Rylee: return message. “I’ll be there in three days.” He sent the message and stood, touching his comm. “Revel. Warm up the Viper. I’m leaving Dromund Kaas.”
Thank you so much for reading! This story was a massive (300K words) 5-year endeavour, and in many places it went in unexpected directions. If you managed to stick through the whole thing (and I’m guessing you did if you’re here), I’d be interested in your thoughts! Even if it’s been years, I check comments regularly.
So in the previous version of this ‘epilogue’ I received a comment from someone saying it didn’t really feel like the end of the story? And that person is 100% correct, because it’s not the end of the story, but I did a bad job of making it feel like the end of the fic – I think because I still had Ashara/Murlesson soundtracks I wanted to use (Jonathan Young’s covers of Shut Up and Dance and Every Time We Touch, and Disturbed’s You’re Mine), and because I wasn’t planning to write a sequel so I wanted to let everyone know how things were going in Murlesson’s future a bit.
However. I’m now attempting to begin work on writing a sequel. And it’s going to be just as big as this one. Even though it’s annoyingly hard to be ambitiously creative when feeling on the edge of burning out all the time, and I also feel like I need to play all the content so I can fit in my OC story arcs, so it’s going to take a while because ugh I hate playing that game. So if you read the previous version of this epilogue and are wondering where all the content went, fear not! It’s going to get recycled into the new fic (tentatively called The Devil You Know). I’m also working on a Holiday Special, because it’s funny.
(more self-critique: I feel, upon months-later read-throughs, that Act 4 is a bit uneven. It certainly has stakes and tension, but it was difficult to create a through-line of plot, because I decided to have it do a lot of timeskips. I also had a lot of ideas for how to make Murlesson’s life hard, and maybe using ALL of them was overkill on the pacing. So it is what it is, but I’ll be keeping these thoughts in mind next time I write something similar. : D )
Anyway, I’ll see you in an unspecified future time frame with more Sith bois and girls! Murlesson/Aristheron/Akuliina team-up! Cheers!