This is the conclusion to this fan fic, hope you've enjoyed reading it - or if you are a newcomer to this, the past chapters can be found backdated in my blog history :)
If you do read, please let me know what you think of it, i'm a review addict - it also helps me figure out where i've been going right and wrong ;)

Then:

It had been too many years since he had stood where he did now. Deemed for all intense purpose to have been too immature and inept to grace these halls or attain any position of higher rank than he held. At the time, Khalee Lah had considered many theories relating to underhanded tactics and petty deception as the reasons those around him would not grant him further escalation. But he had spent much time in the company of those who revered the spirit of deception herself, to know that this was unlikely. It had become clear to Khalee Lah during his time with the priest Harrar, that here was only one way to find the path he now stood so precariously upon. He only wished that he had learned those lessons sooner.

At 23 years of age, he had lost the creche-like attitude toward most situations, which often saw him rushing into the fray too soon, irreversibly ill prepared.
Skill in combat was one thing, but without due caution, you could end up misfortunate. And misfortune often, if not always, spawned failure.
His grandfather, Czulkang Lah, had not been lying when he had said that it was important to know your enemy.

The private quarters of Tsavong Lah, now aboard domain Dal, were somewhat sparsely furnished. Save for the absolute essentials, there was little in the way of embellishments. Varying types of amphistaff lay formant in hibernation behind a membranous covered cavity in the yorik coral wall. Khalee Lah recognized this as a form of nourishment tank, to preserve the living weapons until time or absolute need caused them to be awakened.
The young warrior supposed that the warmasters belongings, if indeed he kept them, had been destroyed with his flagship, the Sunulok. But by all accounts, his father had little need for possessions other than those he carried with him, or more aptly, on him.
While Khalee's own grafts and elaborate scarification seemed the source of many of his subordinate's curiosity, Khalee Lah himself had to wonder and admire, the suffering the warmaster must have embraced to endure each and every one of the scale-seeds being fused to his very bones and allowed to grow over time, to form the armoured layer atop his flesh.

The wet sound of the entrance membrane to the chamber dilating took Khalee Lah by surprise, causing him to pivot immediately in the direction of the sound. Upon seeing Tsavong Lah enter the chamber, the young warrior emphatically snapped his fists to opposite shoulders in a salute that received a slight nod of approval from his father in return.
This was it. The definitive moment.

" So you return? I would say I was surprised to hear the news before I summoned you, but this is not so." Tsavong Lah seemingly mused, and Khalee Lah wondered if all this had really been for nothing.
"I knew, as did one other who once shared the same insight, that you had the makings of a great warrior, that the gods smiled on our domain."

That had not been what Khalee Lah had expected to hear, and he had to wonder also, if this other his father spoke of, was in fact his mother?
Wonder, but not deign to ask.
He had been invited to listen and the warrior caste above all others, were consummately literal.
Instead he waited, seemingly patient, to hear the warmaster out.

" And they smile on us to this day." Tsavong Lah intoned as he faced his son, clapping his hands down firmly on each of his son?s Vonduun crab armoured shoulders.
Khalee Lah noted the intent glint in his father's eyes and knew this to mean something more than the simple wish to express pride in his offspring. He was not to be disappointed.

"I am sure that you are more than aware of the task I left to the Executor, Nom Anor?" Tsavong Lah inquired, allowing a mere hint of disdain to seep into his tones as he was forced to speak that wretched name.
How many more failures would he have to endure at the fault of that one? His time would come.

Khalee too, echoed his fathers disdain in his response,
"You sent him to persue and capture the twin Solo?s warmaster. A task in which he failed you abhorrently."

Tsavong Lah was pleased to hear his son say that it had been a failure, rather than a half completed plan. Not for the fact that it actually had been a failure, but for the fact that Khalee recognized it as such.
True, while they held Jacen Solo captive, Jaina had lived through the chase, long enough to escape. One twin would not please the gods when promised two. Therefore, this was an abysmal failure. He expected no less from Nom Anor.

"Indeed," The warmaster growled deeply enough to rattle his own lungs, " I cannot afford failure this time, the twin sacrifice must come to pass!"
He raised his ailing left arm for emphasis and Khalee Lah restrained the urge to recoil at the sight of the suppurating flesh on the join of the graft. So the rumours were true? This could have disastrous results for their domain.
He was yanked from his thoughts as his father began to speak again.

"I am sending you, commander, to accompany the priest Harrar in a pursuit to capture the female twin Solo. Harrar had often leant me invaluable and divine insight into the minds of both the gods and the enemy. Unlike the Intendants, he has only the interests of the mighty Yuuzhan Vong at heart."

Khalee Lah had not heard much of the latter half of his father's words. His attention was focussed like a dovin basal was on absorbing enemy fire, on the first half of his words.
Commander?
He could not show his sudden joy. Nor the fact his pride threatened to swell and consume him. This truly was a great day to return to his kin. It made the tedium he had suffered through inaction somewhat bearable. But he would never have let on that much either.

"I am honoured warmaster." He could not hide the excitement in his voice it seemed, "I will not fail you, I swear it as the gods are my witness." And he would not, not so soon after earning his fathers approval, he would see to it personally that shame and disgrace would not befall the one that many looked up to, or his domain.

"Go, my son, and I trust in your ability to keep your word. You will not fail me." Tsavong Lah's words were needlessly harsh, but pride swelled in his heart. He had always known that his son was destined for greatness. Perhaps one day he too would find himself in the same position his own father had been in before the invasion of the infidel galaxy? Tsavong Lah wondered if he would so graciously step down from the pedestal of warmaster, just as Czulkang Lah had from his? No, perhaps not in the same way, but he could think of no one else he would rather owned the title than Khalee Lah, his son.

*****
Now:

The sharp edge of the coral-shard coufee, glinted ever so delicately in the dim, bioluminescent green glow of the lichen that adorned the walls of his private chambers. He had never really been one for material possession, deeming them pointless or as an excuse to distract from self sacrifice. They were a complete distraction sometimes, but one that held, for some reason, sentimental value. Perhaps akin to a new graft or scar? A status symbol portraying ones achievements and devotion. He had little need for that he did not carry with him, on him or within him. And his memory was certainly sharp.
However, the coufee that he held now provoked - for him - many memories he could appreciate. It had been given to him by his father, then warmaster, upon his leaving his domain?s cr?che to become a true warrior.
The crude living weapon had taken many lives, or so his father had explained, and was handed down to him on his auspicious joining to the ranks of domain Lah.

Tsavong Lah had found as much use in the weapon as his father had claimed. In his early days he had often slept in the on board grashals of worldships with the coufee within close reach. It had served him well through those times so full of petty rivalry. And eventually, many had fallen by his hand that he was considered one to be both honoured and wary of. He could have said the coufee brought good fortune. But Tsavong Lah did not believe in luck.
Still, he wondered if he had passed this to his son as he had wished, would not Khalee Lah be?.No, it had been the will of the gods, a warning to domain Lah as Harrar had suggested.

All he had done did little to fill the void inside himself that had been left vacantly wide by his son. Khalee Lah, A bright hope for the future of the Yuuzhan Vong warrior caste, was gone forever. And it was Tsavong Lah alone, who had been left to shoulder the doubt aimed firmly at the door of his domain.

He had perhaps, Tsavong Lah thought, lost sight of things. Sight that could be regained only by rectifying the situation and doing so swiftly so as to take all by surprise.

He would take from the infidels what they had taken from him. Their hopes for the future, and in doing so he would seal the future for his own kind. Even if that meant hunting down every single last Jeedai himself. They would taste the pain that had stained him for so long and through it all, he would finally be able to embrace his own.

END.