A Star Wars fantasy Fan Fic
by: Empress Vader

Disclaimer: I'm sure all readers understand Star Wars is not my property. And my use of it's characters and history is not for any kind of profit, just pure entertainment. Please don't sue me. I just borrow you characters to take them on a fun fantasy trip and then turn them back over to their bodies, lives, and proper universe.

author's note: I'll admit the 'red mistress' is a vampire knock off creature. So sue me.

Chapter 2

Part 1 - Entering Darkness

Padmé saw a dove and he hadn't seen it. A white dove, she hadn't seen one since the Dark One had taken over and turned her beautiful dream into a nightmare. She thought she shad fooled herself at first, but the bird came back the next day and sat on the windowsill. It made eye contact with her. They just studied each other for a long time, conveying the wordless message. Then the Bird flew away. Did it mean her children were coming? She could feel them closer than before, some sense deep down inside. How long would it be now? How long?
 
 

***************
 

They had descended into darkness and they could suddenly feel the chill of darkness. It ran up their spine and coiled around there mind. As tired as there feet were, they didn't want to stop. Fear made them want to leave the dark forest as soon as possible. Four children and one full Wizard. Majus seemed rather calm despite the darkness and the children wondered if he had mastered someway of dealing with the intense sense and awareness of evil.

Despite being tired, they weren't relieved when Majus insisted they set down camp. The thought of sleeping in the dark woods all had them afraid. They didn't know if they would be able to rest.

"I sense your fear children," Majus said as the children settled down. "Be guarded in this place, but do not fear it. However, do not underestimate it either. Do not truly sleep. You learned how to give your body's rest, but not your minds in meditation. Use that technique."

"Why Majus?" Sorin asked.

"The shadows," Majus said. "They can creep into an open mind and attempt to seduce it to evil. You must stay focused, alert."

"Does the Red Mistress really exist?" Mava asked with fear vibrating in her voice.

"The red mistress, the blood huntress, so many names she goes by, they go by." Majus sighed. "Yes, they are as real as you or me. And nothing gives them more pleasure than feeding on Majik blood."

"Do the Dark Majiks fear them?" Luke asked more out of curiosity than fear.

"Fear them? They worship them." Majus told him. "They even will sacrifice their children to them."

"That's disgusting," Leia said.

"There are also women, who desire to know their power so much, they allow themselves to be turned into the Red Mistress' grotesque servant. They are fed on until they are near death and then the ritual of rebirth is begun. For all it's physical ugliness, these women attain much dark power. The Red Mistress herself is quite beautiful."

"I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to. I say we make as much time as we can with as little rest as possible," Leia concluded.

"I agree," said the other children.

"I don't," Majus said. "Here is where you will need much strength. To exert yourself to weakness would not be productive."

The children looked at each other.

"I shared my strength with you," Luke said to Mava, giving her his hand.

"I shared my strength with you," Mava said to Sorin as she took his hand.

"I share my strength with you," Sorin said to Leia as he gave her his hand.

"I share my strength with you," Leia said giving her brother a special smile.

Sharing their strength, the rested, holding each other's hands. Majus was proud of them. Fear had united them, he knew they would need something stronger than fear to complete the journey, but uniting them was important. The children's minds remained alert all during the night. Thier bodies rested, but they weren't really comfortable. The fear was still in them. And all through the night they felt something evil trying to probe at them.
 
 

When it came time to rise, they were all ready to go. But the mental stress hadn't allowed their rest to truly be rest. The blood sucking Red Mistress was their biggest worry. They all believed in the force of goodness, light magic over dark, but they were children and could not help fearing the monster in the woods.

"I think I hear something," Mava said after 3 hours of so of traveling.

"What did you here?" Luke asked.

"Shh," Leia said. "I hear it too."

"I don't hear it," Sorin said.

"Shhh," Leia commanded.

Silently, Majus watched the children. The boys finally heard the rustling, but by them Leia's quick hand had grabbed her dagger and flung it into the grass beside Luke. He jumped, thinking she was surely aiming for his foot. He reached down to get the dagger and was surprised to find a creature attached.

The creature was a snake or at least snake like. Long, thin, slimy, but covered in all these spikes. Luke stared at it, amazed at it's length, mostly because it was so thin.

"Good work Leia," Majus said. "Those things are poisonous."

Luke dropped it then. Leia pulled her dagger out of the dead creature as Sorin and Mava patted her on the back with a 'good job Leia'. Despite himself, Luke felt a jealousy of Leia's praise. Of the twins, he had always been the most gifted of the two force children. But that could only have been because, whatever little it might have been, he had been trained by previous Jedi masters and she had been trained (very little) by him, when he had just reached the stage where he could respectably say he was a jedi knight. Now that they had been knocked back to equal ground, could she excel beyond him? But it was selfish of him to want his sister to be a less able force user than himself, it was wrong, he wanted her to be on his level, it was...it was this place that made him feel that irrational jealousy.

As they walked, Leia came close to him.

"Luke," Leia said. "I had this powerful. I just sensed that thing and--"

"It was only a snake," Luke rebuked.

"A snake that would have killed you, I saved your life little brother."

"You have no proof I'm the youngest, just because you're taller--"

"Why can't you be happy for me?" Leia said.

"When you do something important, like stop a Rancor maybe I will be," he snapped.

"So we measuring foes now Luke?" Leia replied. "Is that how we grade force potential these days!"

The two other children and Majus stopped and stared at the twins.

"I'm not grading you, but being a Jedi is not about one little moment of clarity and killing a little snake."

"Fine, Lucas," Leia snapped. "I'll let the next one kill you."

Then she turned on her heels and walked away. So much for sharing strength, Majus thought as they continued on through the dark woods.
 
 

Luke and Leia traveled with an invisible wall between them for the rest of the day. The spent most of the day in silence. Sorin and Mava tried to raise conversation with each of them and bring it together, but it always failed. It continued that way for five days and night. They still rested as they had the first night, in a circle, but Majus could tell that the circle was broken. Luke and Leia, as siblings often do, had had a spat. It was harmless and normal and if they were anywhere else, it could play itself out in it's own time. But in the Dark Forest, any and everything could be exploited by the dark forces of the woods. Physically, the only threat they had met was the snake, if that's what it was. Even though they could still feel a threat around them, not seeing it there defenses were down. Majus knew the greatest trick evil could play on there minds was pretending it wasn't there.

At the end of the first week they ran into a wall of vines. Not a wall covered in vines, a wall that was actually made of thick vines. The vines had thick spiked thorns that bought back memories of the snake.

"What's this?" Mava asked.

"Should we cut through it?" Sorin inquired.

"It's the the fortress of the Dark Majik's," Majus pointed out. He had bought them in this direction on purpose. To show them the Dark Majik's existed, just as they, the light Majik's, did.

"We got to turn back," Mava said. "Find a way around."

Leia looked at Majus, who didn't seem afraid at all. He seemed entirely too calm.

"Fear will destroy you my dear," Majus said. "Understand the evil, but don't fear it."

Leia wasn't afraid, she felt the darkness of the place. However, in the belly of evil, one could adjust. However, there was something else in Majus' eyes. He was looking at the the wall of the fortress with a bit of longing. And she knew it wasn't longing for the Dark Majik order or the power it represented. It was a look of love, something her adult self understood. Vanassi, his wife, she was among them. A lost soul, but still his long.

She began to wonder if her mother had ever looked at Vader with such longing. Had her mother loved Anakin despite the darkness that consumed him. She wondered if, despite his many injuries, despite the suit, despite everything, if given the chance to look upon Anakin, would she have still loved him. She still couldn't think of him as her father. Bail was her father, not Vader, not Anakin, Bail Organa.

"What's that," Sorin said as he point to a great flame rising up from behind the wall. A dragon emerged from the flames, all black and huge. It's wings spread out and blocked what light was left in the sky. It looked at them and started toward them.

"Run," Sorin said.

They turned to run, but were forced. to freeze as four horrible creatures rose in front of them. The things that rose out of the darkness seemed more dead then alive, their faces deformed. At some point they had to have been women. They had elongated fingers tipped with razor sharp nails and glowing red eyes. They looked pale and slickly, but they were anything but that, as witnessed by their quick movement.

Majus wasn't afraid of them. He raised a hand and the creatures were thrown back as if by some invisible wind forced in their direction. They got up and were on top of the groups again in a few leaps. The children took out there weapons and fought against them. As soon as they found room to flee, they ran. The fled without looking, becoming scattered throughout the woods. They quickly realized they were lost in the Darkness, without Majus, without each other. Everyone was on there own.
 
 
 
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