#best described as: local vampire attempts to parent but initially forgets to tell son they are related

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Star Wars Wednesday

(Another excerpt from my "accidentally made a 12k document out of this prompt" fic. Long post incoming)

The last gear turned at seven o'clock in the morning. The counterweights clattered, and the brass doors swung open. The boy looked dead on his feet. Vader knew enough about being the walking dead to recognize the exhaustion. 

"Congratulations," he said calmly. "Most never make it this far. I do confess-" he interrupted himself with a grunt as he left his throne- "That I expected you some hours ago. I'm afraid that time has run out."

"No."

Vader raised an eyebrow. Luke was pale, and trembling, and the cut over his eyebrow bled sluggishly. He could smell the boy's blood now. He could smell Padme's blood. If there had been any doubt about his identity before, it was gone now. And despite all he had fought through, the child was still clinging to a shred of defiance.

"I beat your stupid game!" Luke shouted. "You said I had to find evidence of my father. I did."

This was unexpected.

"Oh? Did you now?" Vader approached slowly. "And what have you found, little one?"

With a sharp, angry gesture, Luke motioned to the floor. "Your castle. The warding runes on every load bearing pillar in the great hall are all written by the same hand. They're laid out in the shape of a japor charm. Just like my mother's necklace."

Vader leaned back on his heels, astonished. He studied the boy's face, wavering between anger and fear, for some time before he burst out laughing.

"Aren't you clever?" he laughed, "I must say, I am impressed. I set you a trial and you've proven yourself admirably."

He sobered quickly. "However, you are mistaken on one point. I said that you were to find proof of your father's death. Not his life. There is ample evidence of that, though I would expect few to be able to interpret it."

He closed the distance between them with two great strides and offered a thin smile. "There will be time to decide your fate in the evening. For now, I suspect you have exhausted the last reserves of your strength."

Somewhere in the inner sanctum, the nursery he had prepared long ago sat gathering dust. It would suit the boy well enough for now. The infantile wall hangings might need to be removed, of course, but nothing else need be touched. 

It was, Vader decided, a good day.

[[MORE]]

Luke didn't remember collapsing. He knew he must have, or he wouldn't be waking up now. But the last thing he remembered was stumbling back to put some distance between himself and Vader. 

How was he still alive? 

Morosely, Luke wondered if the rumors of Vader being a vampire were true, and he was being kept for dinner. That probably explained why the dark lord had said his fate would be decided in the evening.

Well. Luke wasn't going to let that happen. 

Opening his eyes took a herculean effort, but he knew that if he wanted to survive, he had to get up. His head pounded, all but begging him to close his eyes and go back to sleep. It would've been so easy; he was already bone-weary from the midnight march to the castle, and the sheer number of traps he'd had to avoid and broken stairs he'd had to climb had steadily drained his remaining reserves of energy. 

It didn't help that he hadn't eaten anything since the day before. There had been puddles of rainwater here and there in the castle, where the roof needed repairs, but Luke hadn't been brave enough to drink from them. His throat felt as if it was trying to remind him very pointedly of this fact.

Slowly, as if by centimeters, Luke pushed himself upright. A heavy cloth fell to his lap with a quiet rustle, and Luke squinted at it in the darkness. Now that he was actually paying attention to his surroundings, this didn't look like a dungeon. Or wherever vampires kept their potential meals. For one thing, if you were going to kill someone, why go to the effort of putting them in a real bed?

It didn't feel like his cotton pallet on the farm -- the one Owen had worked so hard to buy when Luke outgrew the cradle -- and it certainly didn't feel like the back of the wagon Jabba's men had put him in. Luke bounced experimentally. It was firm, but soft enough that his hands left finger-shaped indentations in the mattress. Maybe all the rooms in the castle were like this?

Although, Luke had been starting to think there weren't any bedrooms in Vader's castle at all.

Had his father truly designed this place? All the runes, the layouts of the floors, everything suggested the hand of Anakin Skywalker. Had he built it for Vader, or was this where Luke would have lived if the Red Horde had never come out of the mountains?

Luke fought to untangle himself from the thick down comforter and rolled over the side of the bed. It was low to the ground, luckily, so it wasn't far to fall. Soft fur met his hands, and Luke recoiled. Had he landed on an animal?!

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Luke realized he was kneeling on a wolf-pelt rug. He thought of the Red Horde's lycanthrope troopers and shuddered.

There was a window somewhere above him, high enough that it only sent a sliver of fading light down into the chamber below. It caught the tarnished silver of stars, set into the two farthest walls in the shapes of galaxies and constellations. They would have been beautiful with some polish. For now, they were hardly visible against the stone.

Luke inched to the door and nearly tripped over a rocking horse. What was a rocking horse doing in a place like this?! He jerked back and looked around him a second time. The small bed, the bookshelf, the stars on the walls...his blood ran cold as he put the pieces together. This was a nursery. 

Luke very quickly decided that he did not want to know what had become of its intended occupant.

He scrambled to the door and was relieved to find that it was not locked. Relief soon gave way to unease once more. The nursery, apparently, extended beyond the bedchamber. Wooden swords of varying sizes hung on one wall, with a painted chest beneath them. Luke spotted tin knights, and little model chariots, and even a wooden castle with little dolls peering out of the windows. None of it looked like it had been played with. In fact, Luke wasn't sure they'd even been touched.

Despite himself, he felt an urge to take one of the tin knights with him when he escaped. His family had never been able to afford many toys. Beru had taught him to make soldiers of sticks and straw when he was small, and when they inevitably broke, Owen would let him use them for kindling in the winter.

Thoughts of home settled like a weight in Luke's chest. It was his fault they were dead. He knew that.

If Luke hadn't challenged the tax collectors at market, the baron wouldn't have gotten the idea of handing a Skywalker over to Lord Vader. They'd come in the middle of the night. Luke never even had a chance to bury his aunt and uncle. 

Luke bit his lip hard and blinked back tears. Old Ben had traveled upriver to teach the girl from Mother's old letter. Even if Luke did escape, there was no one to go home to.

There was only one part of the room that had not been touched by the dust. Someone had lit a fire in the nursery fireplace. It had to have been recently: the flames were only just beginning to die. On the table beside the fireplace a bowl of fruit and a pitcher of water had been set. Luke's stomach growled pathetically, and he clutched the front of his shirt. Grapes. Those were grapes, still on the vine! Luke sometimes got grapes on his birthday, or during summer festivals. But it was hard for the people in Jabba's territory to get fresh fruit.

He didn't know what the pink fruit was, but he could identify slices of orange and a whole pear. They didn't look like they'd been tampered with, but Luke knew better than to trust appearances. For all he knew, it was poisoned. 

Luke edged past the table, and the two wingback chairs facing the fireplace. He needed to focus on escaping. 

"Ah. So you've decided to join us after all. I was beginning to think you were going to sleep through the night entirely."

Luke jolted. Someone was sitting in the chair.

Lord Vader sat calmly watching him, a faint, pleased smirk on his face. There was an air of lazy satisfaction about him as he leaned around the edge of the chair and gestured to the bowl. 

"Please, help yourself," he said.

Luke raised his chin and hoped he wasn't shaking too visibly. "I'm not hungry."

Vader's sickly yellow eyes seemed almost to twinkle, and he smiled. "Liar."

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Star Wars Wednesday

Not even a prompt, really. It's the opening of a whole darn 12k fic in progress that happened over the weekend. @everyone in my discord chat: you enabled me!

To get the proper atmosphere for this, it is recommended that you turn off the lights and turn up the volume on the soundtrack of Netflix's Castlevania, composed by Trevor Morris. I am stealing its vibes and I'm not giving them back.

🧛‍♂️🦇🕷

________________________________________

Few men approached the Mustafar mountain range with any hope of returning alive. Five guards in the livery of the Baron Jabba of the Hutts rode up the rocky path in tense silence. The tallest peak, a dormant volcano, seemed to glower down at them. In the old days, the Order of the Jedi had lived in watchtowers along the range, protecting the people on either side from the dangers within the mountains. Those days ended when the banner that had always flown over Bast Castle was torn down, presumably alongside the great paladin who had once lived there.

Now the Red Horde roamed freely, killing and blighting at will under the direction of their master, the dread Emperor of Darkness. Who he was, no man could say, but it was rumored that he lived far to the south in the country of Naboo. In his stead, the vampire lord Darth Vader commanded the northern arm of the mighty Horde. And he had set his eye on the lands held by Jabba.

The cart approached Bast Castle, and its shadow seemed to swallow them up.

"I hope you appreciate the view, scum." The guard sitting in the back of the wagon roughly elbowed their prisoner. "Gonna be the last thing you ever see."

[[MORE]]

The prisoner, a scrawny young boy, did not even look up. He kept his attention on his futile efforts to untie himself.

When they raised the flag of truce, a portcullis set into vast pillars of stone was raised, opening the way to where the castle squatted on the side of the mountain. It seemed empty as they rolled over a bridge, but even the boy knew that it was a false calm. Wraiths waited wherever the light did not shine, and they had doubtless already informed their master. 

And sure enough, at the end of the bridge an ominous figure stood before a brass gate emblazoned with dragons. He was dressed for battle in armor so black it seemed to swallow all light that touched it. From beneath an elaborate helmet, yellow eyes blazed. They narrowed as the guards halted the wagon and dragged the boy out in front of them. 

"And what, pray tell, is this?" 

The dark lord stared down at the baron's men with thinly veiled distaste. 

"Consider it a token of...neighborly goodwill," one of them grunted, shoving the bound boy forward. "Our lord baron hopes to establish an amicable relationship between our forces, and sends a gift. The whelp is Jedi-spawn. Do what you will, but leave our city be."

The boy raised his head defiantly and glared at his captors out of a black eye. Vader noted with a detached interest that he could not have been older than twelve. 

"And what makes you think the death of this so-called Jedi spawn will save you?" Darth Vader asked scornfully. 

The lead guard prodded the boy roughly. "The Baron is willing to cooperate. He knows you've got bad blood with those excommunicated soldier monks, right? Well the brat's sire was one of the strongest. He's a Skywalker."

Vader's eyes snapped down to the boy again. He had heard such claims before. Each time they had proved to be false. But this one… On closer inspection, he could see a resemblance. The blue eyes, the shaggy blonde hair...and a barely noticeable birthmark on one cheek. Just like her. Impossible.

"Well?" he asked, affecting a bored tone, "Are you?"

The boy bared his teeth. "I'm Luke Skywalker," he snapped. "Do you remember my father, Anakin Skywalker?" His voice faltered. "They s- they say you killed him."

For a long time, the dark lord was silent. Then, like a breath of frost he hissed, "Do they? Do they indeed?"

He spared a glance at the guards, then at this...Luke. There were too many similarities. The magic of his Life Force crackled around the alleged Skywalker, like lightning drawn to metal. It was worth investigating, at least. He made up his mind and stepped closer to the boy.

"Well then. There are so few diversions in bringing order to this human land. Let us play a little game, Skywalker. If you can find some evidence of your father's supposed death in my castle, you are free to go. If, however, you have found nothing by sunrise, your fate is mine to decide."

He raised a hand, and black tendrils of his Force snaked out to tear the rope from Luke's wrists. The child gaped, wary and startled by the action. 

"Night approaches swiftly, boy," Vader said wryly, "Your time grows short."

Still watching him, Luke edged around him and backed slowly into the dark recesses of the castle Bast. A cold smirk lifted the corner of Vader's mouth. His castle was a labyrinth. Only a Skywalker would be able to find the inner sanctum, and even then, he would not reach it before dawn. That was time enough to discover the truth...and to leave these foolish guards' heads over the portcullis as a warning to the baron. Darth Vader was not so easily assuaged. Especially if they truly had just tried to hold a Skywalker for ransom.

"So that's it then," Jabba's guardsman grunted. "If the deal's concluded, we'll be off."

Very slowly, Vader turned on his heel. "What deal?" he asked with a dangerous smile.