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Halceann doesn’t remember a lot of her childhood. She turns sixteen this year and she is starting to forget the faces of her parents and her sisters. Trying to think of her family from before the end of the war brings up nothing but blurry images of faceless smugglers and Jedi.
Halceann shouldn’t be thinking about this. Darth Invictus is her father now. Hyperion is her brother now. She doesn’t have sisters, and her parents aren’t smugglers; they’re proud Lords of the Sith.
Halceann Solumina turns sixteen this year and her old life is slowly starting to fade away.
The lessons Halceann and Hyperion learn from their father get harder by the day. Force-sensitive children are meant to learn on Korriban, but the name Invictus holds a lot of weight in the Empire, and as such the two can learn the basics at home on Dromund Kaas.
It is raining again, and Halceann is struggling to produce lightning.
“That’s alright, Halceann,” her master father tells her, “you have other talents. Concentrate on them.”
Hyperion mastered force lightning years ago. Halceann remembers the day he first got it right, and she looks back on this memory with hatred.
“That’s alright, Halceann,” her master father tells her, “Hate makes us stronger. Remember this.”
Halceann turns sixteen this year, and she cannot produce force lightning, but she is better than her rival brother at melee combat, and moving objects with the force, and force suggestion.
Halceann turns sixteen this year, and she doesn’t need force lightning to be the most promising apprentice her father master has ever seen.
Halceann turns sixteen and she is gifted with a new training saber; “To match your skill,” her master father tells her, as she opens the box.
Hyperion already has a lightsaber. He just turned fourteen.
Halceann says nothing of this. She’s the adopted child, the apprentice, she doesn’t get to complain.
If her master father didn’t take her in, she would be dead right now.
She knows this, and still she can’t help but feel jealous.
Jealously is allowed – it leads to hate, and hate leads to strength (to power, and then to victory).
Halceann turns eighteen and her master father sends her away to Korriban.
“Hyperion needs more training. He needs my attention,” he tells her, “and you need more skilled instructors. You need a challenge, Halceann.”
Halceann nods, and picks up her bag, and doesn’t look back at her family as she walks up the ramp and onto the shuttle.
Halceann has been on Korriban for five minutes and she already has a new rival. More annoying than her brother. Older than her brother. Less talented than her brother; Vemrin won’t be a problem.
The trials aren’t proving to be a challenge at all, contrary to what her father had told her, and Halceann has already been called to meet with Darth Baras, the Sith she is being groomed to become apprentice to.
“I’m afraid I don’t know the Sith Code, my Lord.” This is a lie – Halceann is never afraid.
She fully expects to be hurt, or struck, but Baras simply tells her the code and then sends her off to kill her overseer. An easy task, she thinks to herself, but she feels a sickly feeling at the pit of her stomach as she heads off to complete this trial, and she can’t quite understand why.
As expected, Overseer Tremel provides Halceann with nothing more than a simple work out, and she takes his hand, and ring, back to Darth Baras feeling hollow inside.
Halceann’s final trial, to take a lightsaber from the tomb of Naga Sadow, leaves her feeling sick yet again. Before she sets off, Baras tells her to take a Twi’lek slave from the prison with her, and Halceann wants to protest. She doesn’t know why, but when she meets the blue twi’lek and sees the treatment she receives, Halceann decides then and there that she is in the wrong place. This isn’t the life she was supposed to lead.
Halceann doesn’t remember a lot of her childhood. She turns nineteen this year and she has forgotten the faces of her parents and her sisters. Trying to think of her family from before the end of the war brings up nothing.
Halceann knows one thing about her family; it is not the father Sith Lord who trained her from childhood. It is not the brother rival she shared a room with. It is the twi’lek girl who is currently asleep in the crew compartment of the ship she has just been gifted. It is the droid who keeps her ship clean and safe. It is the sisters that she feels, deep down inside, are still out there.
Halceann doesn’t need to remember a lot of her childhood. What matters is not where she came from, but where she is going, and as of today, she is headed towards greatness.