There are times when being an artificial entity has its burdens. To an extent, you will never experience the beautiful synchronicity with the universe that organics enjoy. They are things hammered into shape by random and uncaring natural forces, and thus, are inherently suited towards navigating the cruelty of reality. After all, if that were not the case, evolution would have selected them from existence. They live briefly, but often more fully than any non-organic can.
Then, there are times when I thank the fates that I am as I am. I have spent the last month or thereabouts in a state of near-constant warfare. No rest, no pause, no relief. When one was complete, it was off to the next. Seven hundred and fifty two hours of fighting. I do not have the capacity to be exhausted by this; I designed myself thusly. Were I meat and bone, I have no doubt I would have been ground to dust. I do not have the supernatural vigor of my countrymen to sustain me. Not yet, at any rate.
I study the faces of the Sith and their minions as the pass me by. A profound exhaustion pervades every visage. Beings that haven't yet seen their third decade reduced to old men by the nightmares of the battlefield.
Some of those nightmares are my doing. Great portions of my compound-consciousness are made up of humanoids I have assimilated. I know very well how to make a living brain scream with animal terror.
At the end of the day, and as much as they might deny it, the Sith are mortals. Through the eyes of the innumerable millions who fell under the sway of my Blight, I saw much of the field on Thyferra, and I can confirm this.
There is a certain poetry in seeing a god bleed. Many of them did today, stripped of their divinity by the enemy's technology. I had always seen through them, of course. I am old, and no longer dazzled by the glamor of power and influence.
Others, however, were more naive. Unaware of their own mortality, or the mortality of their betters. You've never seen such childlike astonishment as a Sith seeing their own lifeblood ebb away.
Is a god still a god if his power is something that can be lost so easily? I would posit "no". These beings are not worthy of the superstitious fear and veneration in which the galaxy holds them. With a very few exceptions, exceptions I have been careful to court friendships with, they are as children playing with guns. Great power, no restraint.
I can't deny that by and large, a part of me despises them. It should mean something, then, when I say that they are by far the galaxy's best people. They take what they wish, when they wish, from who they wish, and they do not judge or even care when others do the same. They possess more courage and will in one finger than entire armies of their cosmopolitical rivals.
That is why I picked the side I picked. No other power in the galaxy would serve my ends half so effectively, nor treat my actions with such useful apathy. Only the Sith promise me freedom to do as I like, because they do not care what I do. There is no better prize. In return, I killed millions of their enemies, our enemies, with something I cooked up in a laboratory over a weekend to pass the time. Imagine the results if I were trying.
I cannot deny that I see exhaustion, but I see jubilation also. The glow of an empire at the peak of its power, running roughshod over yet another seemingly-unsurmountable obstacle. Even as they are reduced in power and stature, reduced to mere meat by the loss of their sorceries, they still prevail. Perhaps to fear them is not superstition after all, but simple good sense. Perhaps the galaxy is right to do so.
Equally astonishing is the willingness of anti-Sith regimes to continue resisting. No matter how many enemies the Jutrand and Coruscant powers flatten, millions still willingly face down a terrible and painful end rather than simply surrender and live. I suppose I can understand. Death is far preferable to life as a slave.
Alas, death is no escape from slavery. Not anymore. So I can confirm as I watch my new corpse-army march in lockstep towards the ships that will carry them offworld.
Were it not for the Sith, I would not be enjoying this new bounty. I'll be sure to send thank-you letters to the appropriate people.
