Forbidden

CHAPTER FOUR: MASTER OF HIMSELF AND THE DARKNESS

Darth Vader nearly crushed the shuttle controls when he heard his son’s last frantic cry through their mind-link. A cry that was cut off as though slit through with a knife leaving only silence. He could not feel Luke’s presence in the Force at all. 'He cannot be dead. I would sense that if he were. He is being hidden from me. Whoever has done this will not prevail.'

Vader channeled the fear and anger he felt into a cold focus on finding and saving his son. Dark Side power filled him. His actions in operating the shuttle became quicker and more precise. He landed the ship smoothly fifty feet from his son’s X-Wing. He both saw and sensed that Luke was no longer in his ship or the clearing. The boy had to be shielded from sight by the forest’s canopy or in the blood-colored temple.
As Vader strode down the shuttle’s gangway into the clearing, his gaze was pulled away from his son’s ship to the temple Luke told him about. Even with just a quick glance at it, he understood Luke’s difficulty in describing the building. 'It shifts as you look at it.' The lines of the temple that were straight one minute curved sinuously the next making the eye follow angles no human mind could. Vader fought the vertigo that overcame him and wrenched his gaze away from the building. Luke was right. 'It does give one the creeps.' Vader focused on the downed X-Wing. The ruined temple’s mysteries would not distract him; his son was his only priority now.

The Dark Lord saw that the X-Wing’s plastiglass canopy was shattered, an almost impossible occurrence without the G-forces of a crash from space or some well-placed laser fire from another ship. Yet it looks like someone just punched right through it and pulled Luke out of the cockpit. As he got nearer, Vader’s heart beat accelerated. There was a small streak of blood on the pilot’s seat. Not enough to suggest a serious injury, but still it indicated that Luke had been hurt. Vader somehow knew that the bright red splash came from Luke and not his attacker or attackers.

His son’s droid was still in its socket on the ship, but was not operating. A thin trail of gray smoke from sputtering electrical circuits drifted upwards from it. Strange, the droid looks almost identical to my old R2 unit. He looked away from the ship and began scanning the ground.

The Dark Lord’s visor gave him several advantages over normal human eyes. One of those advantages was to be able to see minute traces of the passage of animals or people over all types of terrain. The dry stubby grass of the field was no challenge to his enhanced vision and yielded up to him a story of abduction.

It was clear that his son had been dragged by two … creatures … away from his craft. The creatures were not bipedal. Their tracks were s-shaped as if they slithered over the ground instead of walked. The size of the tracks indicated that the creatures were large as well. Vader tightened his hands into fists at the thought of his small son being abused by these much larger beings. The irony that he had used his own greater size to intimidate his son at Bespin was not lost on him at this moment. That the plan of intimidation had not worked was simply because he did not know his son’s psyche well enough then. The boy bucks against intimidation; it only makes him fight harder. These creatures must have had their work cut out capturing him. The tracks bore that supposition out.

There were gouges in the red-brown earth like wounds where his son had dug in his heels and resisted being pulled by the creatures. Luke had even managed to break away from them at one point, trying to run to the forest that surrounded the clearing, but he had only gotten a few feet before being recaptured. Why didn’t the child use his new light saber against them? The boy has a fair hand with a blade. He should have been able to injure the creatures if not destroy them outright. The Dark Lord shook his head. There were too many things wrong with this scenario and with this world. Even with his confusion over Luke’s failure to use his weapon, Vader was still pleased that his son had fought and apparently fought hard against these creatures.

The Dark Lord had discovered both from that one disastrous encounter with Luke on Bespin and observing the boy’s behavior and thoughts over the following months that Luke, for all his small stature, fought with frightening tenacity and courage. 'He has Padme’s size, but my fire.'

Vader recognized that Luke also had Padme’s delicate beauty, but until the Dark Lord had shared Luke’s dream, that recognition had caused him pause. It was one thing to admire his son’s loveliness in an abstract way and quite another to wonder what it would be like to crush that small lithe body against his own and stroke the silken hair and skin.

The Sith Lord had despaired following their meeting on Bespin when he could not stop imagining his son’s naked golden form against black silk sheets. He had pictured the boy’s head arched back as if Luke were offering his bare neck to his father as a sacrifice. Vader believed that these sexual images were coming from the Dark Side, that yet another corrupt path was being offered to him, a path that would lead him to debauch his own son. 'I feared I might force him into bed with me, but now all I need do is show him that there is no shame for what either of us feels and he will be by my side in all ways …a willing, devoted, loving son and mate. And the universe shall be ours to control.'

The Dark Lord continued to follow his son’s trail. He automatically noted a few bright splashes of blood in the dead grass, which he hoped were from the earlier wound reopening due to Luke’s struggles and not from new injuries. Vader was not surprised that his son’s trail led up the stone steps and into the gates of the alien temple.

Vader stood before the entrance, sending out tendrils of Force sense into the darkened rooms beyond. What gods or philosophies were worshipped here? This place reeks of ancient Force power, but it is strange …not just Dark or Light, but both folded together. An uncomfortable balance. Vader wondered if the odd Force presence here had affected his son’s abilities, perhaps that was why Luke was unable to use his light saber. Vader felt no diminishment in his own powers but he had wielded the Force far longer and had far more training than his son.

The weak sunlight made little inroads into the temple, but thankfully his visor and his own Dark Side powers allowed him to see very well in the dimness. Suddenly, Vader whipped around to face the tree line that surrounded the clearing. There had been a noise … like cloth shifting against cloth … that seemed to come from the forest, but there was no stir of wind or any sign of movement.

Vader then realized why he had been so startled by the slight noise. Other than the raspy hiss of his respirator, the swish of his cape against the ground … and then that dry awful shifting …the place was silent. No animal cries, no rustling of branches, nothing. The planet seemed empty of life yet filled with it. 'Another observation I did not understand when Luke first told me, but now I do when confronted with the contradiction.' Vader grasped the hilt of his light saber, gave the forest one last searching look and turned to enter the building. This mystery would wait until after he rescued Luke.

The darkness inside was not as absolute as he feared. The main entrance opened up into a large foyer devoid of furnishings or decoration; just pure red stone walls and floors. The ceiling was lost in gloom overhead. There were four doorways out of the foyer. They were taller and narrower than human designed thresholds. And then there was the smell: sweet and pungent like cardamom, but with a bitter, oily undercurrent. Vader gripped the hilt of his light saber tighter until the leather of his glove squeaked.
Vader didn’t need his heightened vision to see which way the creatures had taken his son; the layer of dust that evenly coated the stone floor was disturbed going towards the doorway straight ahead of him. The Dark Lord quickly walked through the doorway and into the hallway beyond. Even in the dim light, he could see the hallway was composed of the same red stone as the rest of the building. The stone seemed to give off a reddish glow. He brushed his gloved fingers against it as he walked, startled when he sensed heat.

Doorways dotted the walls every few yards leading into darkened rooms, some of which held rotting tapestries, crumbling furniture and glinting electronics that should have been rusted or inoperative, but glowed with energy as if waiting to be used. Vader gave those rooms little attention; just enough to determine that nothing would come shambling out of them to attack.

He was so fixated on the streaks through the dust that he didn’t look closely at first at the black object with a glint of silver the size of a clenched fist that lay near the right wall. It was only when he caught a whiff of leather and his son’s clean scent from the object did he give it a second glance … then a third … then he picked it up. It was his son’s prosthetic hand with his light saber still clutched. The wires that trailed out of the wrist connector told him that it had been ripped from Luke’s body. Vader’s breathing hitched even with the regulation of his respirator. 'Will I find other pieces of my son’s body scattered about these halls like discarded children’s toys?'

He disengaged the hand from the saber, tossing the prosthetic appendage to the side, while clipping his son’s saber to his belt. He quickened his pace down the hallway, his rage and fear feeding the Dark Side energy that fed him in turn. He hardly noticed that the amount of Dark Side energy he was able to take in had increased two-fold from what he had ever been able to absorb before. All Vader’s concentration was on the fact that whoever had taken his son, whoever had hurt his son, would pay. The whole planet would pay. And if his son was dead … the whole universe would pay.

Vader was a blur of motion as he practically flew down the hallway, following the twisting, turning trail. More and more Dark Side energy coiled within him, filling him. When he heard Luke’s gasping cries from an arched doorway at the end of the hallway, Vader hardly felt the ground beneath his feet.

“Stop! Why are you doing this? What do you want? Ah! No, no, no, NO!” Luke screamed.

Vader charged into the room with his light saber ignited. The room was the size and shape of a small amphitheater. Vader stood on a narrow ledge of stone floor that jutted out from the doorway. He had almost stepped off the edge into the black pit that surrounded an island of stone in the center of the room. There was a fifteen foot span from where Vader stood to the edge of the island. A flickering red Force barrier, the exact shade of Vader’s light saber, surrounded the island. How his son and his captors had gotten across the span was a mystery.

Luke was stretched spread-eagle and bound on an altar of pure white stone in the center of the island. Luke’s two captors slithered about him; their lower halves that of snakes with the torsos and heads of humans, though with no hair. The hawked over his son’s bound body … covetous of his beauty, goodness and innocence.

One of the snake-men turned to face the Dark Lord. Where its eyes should have been there were black pits. The creature’s mouth and nose were just slits in its yellowed skin. Vader was paralyzed by the sight of it, but his fear and loathing continued to increase the Dark Side energy that pooled within him. Somehow encounters with countless alien races had not prepared Vader for these … things. They were steeped in the Force, yet seemed so utterly wrong, as if they should not exist.

A forked tongue whispered out of the snake-man’s mouth that watched him. It hissed, “Dark Lord.”
The way it said Vader’s title made it sound more like a question, a mocking question rather than an acknowledgement of Vader’s status. Then it tittered confirming its disdain. It turned its back on him and continued the torture of his son. It reached with clawed hands and ripped open the front of Luke’s jacket and shirt.

Luke shrieked, “No! Stop! Don’t touch me!”

Vader used the Force to throw his light saber at the pulsing red barrier. If he could but shatter it he could use the Force to jump across the span. The creature will not laugh when I slice it in two with my blade … or rip it a part with my bare hands. But the blade did nothing to the barrier. Vader brought the blade back to his hand. He cast a desperate glance up at his son. His child’s eyes met his, wet with tears and huge with fear and pain.

“FATHER! HELP ME!”

With Luke’s lovely golden skin exposed to it, the snake-man leaned down over the boy and laid its lipless mouth against the center of Luke’s chest. It began to suckle. Luke writhed under the creature’s vile kiss, his back arching in agony, a thin scream issuing from his lips. Vader could see that the flesh around where the thing sucked was becoming blackened.

“Oh, Father, please help me!” Luke’s cry was softer, filled with agony.

With a snarl of rage, Vader threw the blade again and tried to use it to bore through the barrier, but he knew even as he did it that the blade simply did not have the power to breach the barrier. I do not have the power to breach the barrier. The blade flew back to his grasp. Luke’s strangled screams became murmured groans as the blackness from the suckling spread farther over his chest. Vader tried to use his Force push to throw the snake-man off his son, but the barrier stopped him from exercising his powers beyond it.

Vader wanted to scream. His son was dying right in front of him and he could do nothing … nothing. 'I am not what I should be. And my son is going to die for it.' This time instead of blaming others for his weakness, Vader blamed himself. He used that self-hatred to draw in yet more Dark Side power. He was filled to the brink with energy, more Force than flesh, but he knew it would not be enough. Just then Luke let out a low moan, drawing his Father’s attention to his son’s face again.

Luke’s eyes fluttered open and their gazes met. Amazingly, Luke smiled at him. And Vader knew the boy was saying goodbye and telling him that he forgave him for not saving him, forgave his father his weakness. He was telling Vader that he loved him.

Just then as his son’s body seemed to pulse with white light, Vader heard the horrible dry shifting sound again and recognized it for what it was this time. It was the sound of the Dark Side itself speaking to him in its leathery voice. Give yourself up to me, my Dark Lord, my Chosen One. Be what you should be and you will have the power to save your son.

Vader was stymied and frantic as the seconds passed and the end of his child’s existence drew ever nearer. Had he not already given himself up to the Dark Side? Had he not slaughtered younglings and every Jedi he could find all those years ago? He had even killed his beloved wife under the Dark Side’s sway. How could he not be the Dark Side’s already?

Luke’s fair head thrashed against the altar and then Vader understood.

He was still a slave. First, Waato, then the Jedi and finally the Emperor had controlled him and his destiny. They had told him what to do and he had followed their directions. As their slave, he did not own himself. He could not give what he did not own to the Darkness. He had to become the master of himself and then he would become the Master of the Dark Side. This would allow him to become what he should be. If he did not succeed in freeing himself then his son would perish.

There was simply no other choice.

Vader reached within himself and cut his connection to the Emperor. For the first time he was adrift without another to control him, to define him. No longer anyone’s apprentice or servant, Vader felt as if the universe was falling around him, smothering him in blackness, but then he saw a chink of light: his love for his son. Vader released his fear, embraced his freedom, and let himself go completely into the Darkness, holding the love he had for his son like a torch to light his way.