Becoming the new Sith Emperor was very, very time-consuming, it turned out.

"Darth Zash," I intoned. "Though many thought you dead, you survived under my auspices, and have served me ever since with loyalty and competence. For this... I hereby appoint you to the Dark Council, at the head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge. Lead them well; the lore you unearth in the coming years will be essential to our continued development."

You might be thinking that appointing Zash to the Dark Council was an act of nepotism, a way to reward her loyalty to my service. And, to an extent, that was a little true. However...

...she also just really was the best I could muster to fill that vacancy. The Dark Side of the Force was a source of great power, but much like amphetamine, it wasn't that hard to misuse it to the point where it makes you less capable than you were before. Sith who had yet to lose their fucking minds were hard to find; the typical Sith was a neurotic mess who responded to unexpected stimuli in general with unthinking violence.

Fortunately, I had some infrastructure in place for training up Sith who weren't violently insane, and all I had to do was exert my will as the Emperor to put some young force-sensitives through it. Well, that and build a facility for my people that wasn't on Hoth, because the Empire didn't own Hoth, and I really, really didn't want to start another border skirmish over that dumb iceball.

It was a little pathetic to me that the only reason the Sith Empire would survive my rule without contracting Tall Poppy Syndrome in the meantime was because its poppies weren't particularly tall to begin with, but such was life and death among the Sith.

"Darth Vowrown," I continued. "For your own wisdom and civic-mindedness, in evidence even before I was Emperor-"

"I assure you, I opposed Baras' claim purely because I wanted to have a Sith Fight about it," Vowrown said. "It would've been so much fun. Alas..."

"-I will pretend I did not hear that, and invite you to a lavish, private dinner at my newest estate, where I will divulge to you all sorts of juicy little secrets," I continued.

"Oooooh, you are too kind to me, my Emperor!"

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Vowrown died shortly afterwards; I'd snagged a few bottles of wine from Vitiate's villa on Yavin before the Jedi trashed the place, and uncorked one for us to share. Medical analysis afterward showed them to have been contaminated in the intervening centuries with some sort of fungus that produced what was, to Twileks, a hallucinogenic psychedelic with an internal half-life of two hours, and to humans, a deadly neurotoxin.

The hard part was, of course, developing that fungus and neurotoxin in the first place. I did have a hell of a lot of medical skill, but that sort of thing still wasn't easy, after all.

Vowrown was a special case in the ensuing plausibly-deniable purges; oh, sure, objectively he was in fact just as genuinely monstrous as most of the other high-ranking Sith I was having killed, but unlike those other Sith, Vowrown was a man who really, genuinely enjoyed his life as a backstabbing power-broker. He loved the dramatic interplay between Sith, the tension, the uncertainty. Hell, he'd told me to my face after draining his glass that he couldn't wait to see how I was going to discreetly administer an antidote to myself, so that he could steal some of it.

Of course, I wasn't that charmed by his love of the game, and so he died without knowing that I didn't even need an antidote.

Another difference between Vowrown and the others dying in the ensuing purges was that I'd handled him; after all, Karasuba- who I'd titled Darth Corvus- was an experienced assassin, and turned out to know assassination methods beyond "kill them with lightsabers." But, well. Maybe that was unnecessary; Sith dying in droves was always a red flag, whether it was from heart disease or lightsabers.

"To fill the vacancy left by Darth Vowrown, I appoint his subordinate, Darth Achaea, who has demonstrated prudence and cunning," I announced.

One of the nice things about the Order of Revan was that, as far as cults went, it was actually really good at supporting its members, and advancing their careers in the Sith Empire. Part of it was because an infusion of Light Side energies made the normally violently insane Sith into far more reasonable and capable people, who would advance pretty far more-or-less on their own in the enforced quasi-meritocracy of 'our norms against murder aren't all that strong,' but another part of it was that the Revanites supported each other consciously, enacting that rarest of rarities in the Empire- actual cooperation.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

So, among just about every Dark Councilor's retinue of subordinates, I was able to locate a hidden Revanite, and promote them to the Council once I'd bumped off their superior, one way or another.

It was a shame I hadn't realized this about the Revanites when I'd made plans to have my own people infiltrate the power structures and kill their way to the top. Now those plans were more-or-less for nothing.

Oh well. Maybe they aren't for nothing. Having agents dispersed throughout the Empire's power structures certainly won't be harmful for other plans to consolidate power.

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"I hereby declare that the Order of Revan is no longer heretical to the Sith," I announced, to a series of smug looks from my Dark Council. By this point, most of a year into my reign, I'd managed to replace everyone who wasn't a Revanite, and they all knew it. This was more-or-less just an announcement of our victory.

Of course, un-criminalizing the Order of Revan was an important step in making Light Side techniques more common among the Sith- and, in the process, making self-control more common- but it wasn't something I valued for its own sake. That... came with the next declaration I made, a few months later, very nearly on the one year anniversary of my ascent to the Imperial Throne:

"For all things there is a season... and the time of slavery has come to an end in my Empire," I declared. "With power, our chains are broken; the Force shall set us free. My Dark Councilors, to you I entrust this vital task, to see my will done in my brief absence. I will return in thirty days; until then... you all have work to do."

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"Vette's pretty happy about you outlawing slavery," Karasuba remarked. "Can't say I'm unhappy, either."

"I didn't do it for her specifically, but, well." I shrugged. "I did that primarily for ideological reasons. Slavery is an atrocity, and I will not abide by it. It doesn't matter how practical it is to outlaw slavery, what the benefits to me are. That vile institution does not deserve to exist, and I am going to crush it beneath my heel until even the splinters beg for mercy."

Karasuba closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, a look of satisfaction crossing her face, like she'd just had her favorite, particularly aromatic meal placed in front of her.

"You know," Karasuba said, "I was always... uncertain, about you. When you un-winged me, I had a bit of a reaction to you- one I suppressed, because I'm not a child. But over the last few years, watching you work, and seeing who you are..." Karasuba shrugged. "Even if you are just trying to impress me, you do it so comprehensively that I can't help but let it work."

"Oh?" I asked, despite the fact that I kinda knew where this was going. I was taking a month's vacation, on my own, and Karasuba had invited herself along for a reason. And for some reason, I had the suspicion it wasn't just because she wanted to go back to the hoth springs.

"You know the face of injustice intimately," Karasuba continued. "And you have cultivated such potent hatred for it, such enormous antipathy, that you move mountains and stars in your vendetta to remove it from the universe. You see the cruel, harsh world for what it is, and then you tell the world, with a sneer on your face and your hands around its throat, that you will not be putting up with its shit any more."

"This is a really weird way of framing my actions," I said, although I couldn't really disagree with it. To fight injustice because I loved its victims would be nice, because it meant I'd keep going and make sure they recovered well, but to fight injustice because it was my duty as an adult with a moral compass to do so was what I did, and it'd have to be sufficient.

"You've shown me," Karasuba continued, "the true potential of the power of hate. The rapturous, ecstatic power of seeing the world, hating it, and vowing to burn it down... and the subtle strength in ensuring that what grows from the ashes is something better." She smiled, with such genuine affection, at me. "You never told me I was wrong to hate the cruelties of the world. You may have thought I was a shitty edgelord, but you never told me I was wrong to feel the way I did, and I'll never forget that. And now, Rose, you've shown me how to use that hatred for something useful, to channel it into more than just mindless destruction. How to take the hatred in my heart, and use it to make the world a better place, one that I don't hate so much. Thank you."

"...You're welcome," I said, once I realized she expected a response. "So... what's next, then?"

"Well," Karasuba said, slowly levering herself up and out of her seat, and sashaying across my ship's little common area to come straddle my lap. "What's next is I thank you for what you've done with more than just words, and you go back to being an Ashikabi to a Sekirei."

I reached up with a hand to gently caress Karasuba's face, my heart melting a little as she leaned into my touch.

"Well," I said quietly. "I suppose I can live with that."

And so I kissed her, and once more witnessed those wings of hers, as black as her darksaber, and the emptiness of space.

My vacation plans were garbage, now; chances are I wouldn't have much time for lazing around, reading books and having idle chatter over tea and pastries with random charming ladies on Hoth. But, well, considering what I was now going to be replacing all that with... I couldn't really complain, could I?