『Twin Sons』

Entering the suite, Ento could immediately tell it was rather luxurious. Even though she was no Empress Consort, the Knight-Captain had a good status with her life here on Zakuul.

Within this hour glass shaped skyscraper, this home of hers had dark grey walls, with chrome trim, and a black floor. Most of the furnishings were made from luxurious reddish brown wood panelling and there were relics on display. There was even a place for her to hang her armor.

Turning his gaze towards Vaylin as she walked passed him and her mother, she glanced around the place...

Senya hadn't changed anything since Vaylin had been taken away.

Her things were still laying around, it was similar to what parents did when they lost their children. They cleaned their rooms, put their things back and never threw any of it out.

It was clear to her, she hadn't been the only one suffering.

Vaylin turned her head, looking at her mother for a split second without any words. As she glanced away once more, she ran her fingers along the chrome trim of the wall. Pushing herself from the wall with the tips of her fingers, she walked into the center of the common room.

Her gaze went to the table, the place where she had used the force to whittle her wooden toy, the item left back on Nathema once long ago and now once again recently. The bits and pieces of the shavings still persisted in the trim of the tabletop, having hardly been in use since her departure. The young girl let out a sigh and turned her head to look towards the hallway leading to the family bedrooms.

Closing her eyes, she took in a deep breath.

Suddenly there was a heavy THUD.

"Arcann! What was that for?!" Thexan, one of Vaylin's older brothers accused his twin.

Arcann sounding rather surprised responded with a rather nonchalant tone. "Huh? What are you doing on the floor?"

There was a brief silence before Thexan emerged from the bedroom he shared with his brother and peered his head out into the hallway. His eyes moving towards the common room. "Eh?"

Vaylin stared at her older brother who was slowly forming a curved smile over his lips.

"Vaylin!? Father released you from Nathema?" Thexan immediately without any reservation, excitedly, lunged out of the room and darted down the hall. He was barefoot and in a pair of white flannel pajama pants and a black sleeveless shirt.

Arcann, walking out of the bedroom, rubbing his eye with his palm raised a brow. Looking to his sister, his gaze narrowed. Why was she here? Was she defying father? He himself was in a pair of black flannel pajamas pants and a yellow top.

Hearing the pitter patter of feet, Ento watched as Thexan immediately embraced Vaylin in a charging hug. She almost stumbled back, but it seemed she could hold her ground.

"Are you alright? You've gotten taller since I've last seen you..." His hand touched her blonde hair after pushing back her hood. "And you grew your hair back in such short amount of time?"

Ento and Senya both looked at one another for a few seconds, before simpering at the sight.

Arcann however came walking out of the hall, turning his head to look towards his mother. "Did you do this?" Unlike Thexan, he didn't seem all too excited about his mother defying their father.

Thexan turned his head to look towards his brother, "Are you being serious right now?"

Vaylin's arms were around Thexan's waist, her fingers curled up into her palms. Seeing her brother Arcann disappointed and suppressing his true feelings, she bit at the interior of her cheek. Her arms would fall to her sides as Thexan turned around entirely to face Arcann.

"You know..." Ento stepped forward immediately taking their attemption, as he put his hands behind his back, clasping his wrist loosely in one hand.

"Who are you?" The boys asked in unison, before quickly noticing the lightsabers on the boy's belt. They were immediately curious rather than cautious of him. He was younger than them, and yet he had a number of lightsabers at his disposal?

Thexan recognized those weapons... They belonged to the Zealots. Death, the boy could feel their deaths through Ento, even though he could barely pin point him through the force due to the nature of his existence. He killed a number of them. His eyes moved to his sister... As did she.

Arcann then looked towards their mother who flexed her brows.

"My name is Ento Rhade, I am Vaylin's friend."

Vaylin nodded at the boy's introduction, "He saved me from Nethama and fixed my hair." She flipped a lock of her dirty blonde hair with a smug grin across her lips.

"He fixed your hair?" Thexan's eyes widened looking over her head, he never heard of a force power that could make one's hair grow, let alone restore its original color.

Arcann narrowed his eyes on the boy, checking him over. In a way he was jealous, even envyous, over the amount of force knowledge the younger teen had. And as the older boy reached out with the force to get further in-depth information, he subconsciously stepped back.

This boy's very existence was unnatural to Arcann, but as he tried to go deeper, his eyes briefly lost focus. He was having a vision of a rocky barren storm ridden world with no sun in sight, the scene then changed to the interior of a deep dark compound of some kind with only one source of blue light. Then in the end, a number of corpses surrounding a child barely old enough to walk, held in a cylindrical container filled with blue bubbling liquid, reached his mind.

Coming back to as he took a very sharp inhale, Arcann's cheek twitched as he was greeted by a powerful presence relative to his father's.

Ento's head tilted to the side slightly to the right with a deadpan smile, his eyelids lax, "Now... What did you just see?" Using the force to enhance his speed, he was standing in front of Arcann within seconds after a blur of movement.

The twin brother immediately stumbled back at the boy's speed and blinked several times.

Thexan however didn't move, standing in front of his sister as if blocking him from her.

Senya creased her brow, hesitantly reaching for her weapon. What Ento was doing didn't look necessarily friendly, if anything it had some sort of eerie feeling to it.

"Made you flinch," a regular expression formed on his face as he took a step back from the older stumbling teen and chuckled.

"Life... from Death..." Arcann spoke slowly, which suddenly grabbed Ento's attention.

"...What?" Ento was surprised at the words used, a serious stony expression taking over his face.

Vaylin was equally confused at this, what did her brother mean by Life from Death?

Senya slowly let her hand fall to her side, curious as she walked towards her children, glancing over her shoulder towards the blast doors. She found it to be strange that the Emperor hadn't pursued her here, or let alone sent more Knights to apprehend her. The woman knew he had a faster hyperdrive for his ship than she had for the shuttle, he could've beaten them here.

Ento reached over and placed his hand on Arcann's cheek, the older teen's ear between his middle and ring finger. His head then jolted as he was thrown into a flashback.

He could hear the deadly storms raging on, the screaming winds, the bubbling of liquid around his ears. From inside a blue lumincient cylinder, he could see a room filled with corpses of countless exiled Jedi and force sensitives that appeared drained of all life.

At the other end of the room was his parents, father Iridon and his mother, casually walking over the corpses. Ento didn't feel the need to reject what he had seen, what he perceived, neither did he have the need to justify it.

It appears he was created or enhanced through some sort of force ritual combined with science and technology. The one evident sensation though that he felt, was a massive nexus of the indiscriminate force energy and a planet filled with crystalline life.

Just as he was about to be swarmed by millions if not trillions of incoherent telepathic voices, Ento forced himself out of the lucid flashback for his own protection, removing his hand from Arcann's face.. Heaving, borderline hypervenelating, he took a few steps away from the older teen.

Vaylin stepped her around her brother Thexan and quickly rushed over to Ento, grasping his arm in her hands tightly, "Are you alright?" She was worried, the boy who she viewed so closely seemed panicked.

"I... I'm fine..." He spoke shakily, closing his eyes briefly as he tried to regain composure.

Thexan and Arcann looked at one another, then back to the boy, seeing their sister's affections clearly. They were beginning to wonder how long they knew one another. The boys were pretty sure it was longer than this day.

"My sons, we have to go." Senya intruded pleadingly, leaning forward, getting to their level.

"We're not leaving," Arcann spat immediately, "We're not weak, we're not like you."

Vaylin frowned at her brother as she reached out toward him and with a flick of her wrist, threw him into the nearby couch, sending feathers flying into the air. With her face scrunched up, anger in her eyes, "ARE YOU CALLING ME WEAK!?"

She didn't defend her mother, but because she was wanting to runaway too, she was triggered by her older brothers words.

As the feathers cleared, Arcann lifted himself from the ruined furniture, frowning at his little sister. He was rather durable for a teenage brat with a shaved head. "That was uncalled for!"

Senya looked over her children, it looked as if a fight was about to start as Arcann began to march towards them with anger.

Thexan moved in front of his sister, blocking Arcann, denying him access. "Brother, we can talk about this. No need get heated," he held one hand out, as if telling him to stop where he was.

Ento looked to the ølder boy and gave a sigh, waving his hand, Arcann suddenly became disoriented and began stumbling backward.

"What... What was..." Arcann put his palm to his forehead, his consciousness going in and out. His gaze then moved towards Ento, before he fell to his knees and flopped face first onto the floor... Asleep.

Thexan, Vaylin and Senya all looked to him with somewhat amused, yet curious, expressions.

+ + +

Upon the Eternal Fleet's Flagship, the Immortal Emperor stared at a holographic screen from his throne. His gaze locked on the boy within the confines of the home that housed his family.

"Heskal..." His eyes moved towards the man with bright blue hues, grey hair and a yellow armored uniform derived from the Zakuul Knights.

The Scion bowed his head as he was standing before his Emperor, as did his escort of Knights.

"What can you tell me about this boy? Can you see his future...? The future of my Eternal Empire?" His gaze sharply gazed through the man that stood before his throne.

"My Emperor, I do not see his future, but we perceive the Princess Vaylin's future differently now." Heskal's eyes traveled to the ground briefly before looking back up towards the legendary Emperor seated in front of him. "She emerges well over three thousand years from now."

"Hm. This is an interesting development..." His daughter didn't seem to be a threat to him any longer, it seemed this boy pacified her from that preordained path. "What of my sons?"

"..."

"Well?" The Emperor rolled his neck, waiting for the leader of the Scions to give him a report.

"At Arcann's behest, our Empire will enter a war with the Sith Empire and Galactic Republic, a war where he will succumb to the darkside as you persist to ignore his efforts." Haskel bowed his head to his Emperor as he finished these words. "And strike out at you."

Valkorion narrowed his eyes forward, hearing that his son will strike out at him and not his daughter. Was it because of his ignorance of the child? "They seek recognition... Hm... Weakness, such vile weakness..." He slowly raised from his throne as he recalled his upbringing on Nathema and how his own father rejected him as lesser blood.

It seems ignoring his children brought the same effect thanks to his apathy as a father himself. "But perhaps..." The Emperor began to ponder to himself.