The Warlock, the Witch, and the Empire

Chapter 7

(Blackheart Commander's Quarters)

Soon, the Imperial warlock (Y/n) (L/n) woke up from his sleep in his quarters on his ship, his companion Cinder Fall still sleeping soundly with him as they rested. Looking down and seeing her snoring while using his chest as a pillow, the man smiled a genuine smile since a long time as he carefully got out of her grasp and got up to change his attire.

Changing out of his suit and into his Imperial body glove and armor, (Y/n) started to think about what the future might hold for him..

Here he was beginning the downfall of a planet's old system to replace with his own, and soon he would use it to desert the Galactic Empire and Palpatine himself. When that happened, he needed to make sure it was done on his own terms, not the emperor's.

The only question was, how?

How would he be able to announce his desertion without having the full might of the emperor's armies and navies dumped onto him? If he did this recklessly, he would have legions overrunning his forces, and perhaps even Darth Vader unleashed upon him.

Vader would be an obvious threat if he was deemed a great enough threat to Palpatine's power base. Tackling him in a dogfight was unwise, since he was an excellent pilot, and challenging him in a duel head on was definitely out of the question. His cybernetics were a potential weakness to exploit, but he needed to be stronger in the Force to defeat him, as that man/machine being had survived natural disasters that he definitely wouldn't live through.

Vader aside, there was also the matter of the legions and navies Palpatine would sick on him. His own Dark Tide legion was elite and all, but they were a single invasion outnumbered by a galaxy-wide empire that would overwhelm them. Even if he made enough Chrysalisk Grimm from his experiments, they were still massively outnumbered.

As he finished clasping on his chest armor and picked up his helmet, he began to look in the mirror and look at his face.

Over the night, his Force Mask had faded, showing his true, half dark side/half grimm face in his reflection. As he looked into his own orange and red mixed eyes, he thought about what he had become to look like this, his own rage and hatred at the Empire starting to manifest again.

Since his admittance of disliking Palpatine's Empire even more when joining Salem, his hatred of the Sith and emperor grew more exponentially, manifesting to the point of hating him as much as he now hated the Je-.

Suddenly, he brought up his brow in realization of what he would define himself as.

During the dance, he had told Cinder that the Rule of Two would make sure he would never be a true Sith. At first he would've taken that as a challenge, to replace Vader and eventually plot to overthrow Palpatine, if the paranoid man would even amuse himself with that motion. But now, with the restoration of some of his old self mixing in with his new dark persona, he remembered how the old Sith lords came to be, and thought about who brought about the dark side order in the first place: Dark Jedi.

It was the Dark Jedi of old that started the old wars to nearly bring the order to it's knees, and the ones who molded the Sith species into the order that dominated the galaxy in the first place. Count Dooku had his own cadre of dark siders during the Clone Wars that were once Jedi, but they were considered acolytes and didn't really take the title of Dark Jedi that much. And Palpatine used fallen Jedi as his inquisitors, but kept them weak so as to make sure they wouldn't rebel against him in ganging up on him and Vader.

Perhaps that is what he could be. In recent times, the title got faded out as a blanket term for dark siders that belonged to no dark organization. But he could make that into something great. He could be a Dark Jedi Warlock, being a dark side user while also not having the trappings of the Sith corrupting him and holding him back.