Half-Blood : Avatia's Story

[silvershadows]

Greetings all. Some of you may know me as the author of the In the Shadows and Of Blood and Honor series of novels set in the SWTOR universe. While I am still writing these novels, as of late my attention has been diverted by a wonderful roleplaying story slowly unfolding in the game. For this storyline, I will be writing several backstory 'scenes' of important events from my character's life, to better delve into her personality and see what makes her the person that she is. I am enjoying this story so much, that I decided to share these bits of backstory with the community. I hope that you all enjoy them.

 

For the sake of clarity - the main character in these short story blurbs is a Human/Sith Pureblood hybrid named Avatia (Sith for Vision), the last of her mother's Pureblood genetic line. This is the beginning of her story.

 

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Childhood Lost

 

 

The child sat, still and unmoving on the carpeted floor of the common room in the tiny home she lived in with her parents, her legs crossed beneath her and her hands folded in her lap. In silence, she listed to the voices of her mother and father as they drifted through the thin walls separating her from them. She couldn’t make out the words, spoken as they were in hushed, urgent tones, but she could feel the tension rising in the air. Through the Force, she could feel the ripples of fear as they emanated from the figure of her mother, who came now from the doorway in the northern end of the room, striding purposely toward the young girl who sat in the center of the floor.

 

“Avatia, come, get your things. We are leaving this place, now.” The woman’s skin was normally a shade of pink reminiscent of the inside of a seashell. Now it had darkened to a rose-colored hue, from emotion or stress – or perhaps both. The child could feel the turmoil roiling through her mother’s mind, could sense her fear, the anxiety that rippled beneath the surface of her sharp, pointed features.

 

“Yes, mother.” Avatia stood, rising to the full height her seven years of life had given her, moved with swift and sure steps toward the small bedroom she slept in. Letting out a quiet sigh, she began to gather the meager belongings that she called her own – first a few simple sets of clothing, then the datapad that held a collection of her favorite stories and historical texts. Most important to her was a small vibroknife with a twisted, curved blade that she picked up from its resting place on the small table next to her bed. The knife was a ceremonial weapon her mother had given her on the occasion of her fifth birthday, explaining that it had once belonged to a great and powerful Lord of the Sith.

 

“One of my ancestors,” she had told her daughter proudly, the glow of her yellow eyes shining in the dim light of evening. “And thus one of yours. You may not have red skin, child, but remember always that the blood of the pure runs through your veins.”

 

Avatia tucked the knife into her belt, taking care to angle the blade so that it would not threaten to pierce through the fabric of the simple dark robes she wore. Glancing around the room, she realized there was nothing else she wanted to take with her. A slight frown tugging her lips downward, she moved to step back into the common room.

 

Her father’s form filled the doorway, blocking her exit and causing her to stop short before him. He was a tall man, taller than her mother by at least a head, and his dark hair contrasted with his pale complexion – skin the same shade as her own, a color that reminded the child of the nerf-milk her mother sometimes gave her, paired with a dark, sweet, cookie. His eyes were the dark, thunderous hue of storm clouds, and his expression was, as always, stern and forbidding.

 

“Avatia.” He spoke her name in the deep, gravelly voice she had come to associate with lessons of mental discipline and strength. “Hurry now, child. There is no time to spare.”

 

“Why are we leaving?” She didn’t often question her father, didn’t often dare to risk the wrath that might rise in his eyes when she did not promptly obey his commands. Greatly daring, she stated, “I like it here.”

 

He would have answered her – indeed his mouth opened once more to speak, but there came a noise, a loud thudding sound that echoed throughout the entirety of the small home, causing the very walls to vibrate from the force of an unseen impact. It seemed to Avatia that her father’s lightsaber appeared in his hand almost instantly, the crimson blade shining brightly as it extended from the silvery hilt he held tightly in his fingers. “Get back,” he snarled at her now, and the sound came again, this time punctuated by more noises – a shout from the throat of her mother, and a crashing, splintering sound as the door to their home erupted into a thousand shards of plastifiber and durasteel that rained through the air.

 

Clutching the datapad of stories to her chest the way another child would a stuffed animal, Avatia stepped back into her room as her father’s arm came up, shielding his face from the hailstorm of debris. There came the snap-hiss sound of her mother igniting her saberstaff, and three figures stepped through the hole that had once been the door, each one hooded and cloaked in dark robes of the deepest black. Each man carried a blood-red lightsaber, and those blades cast their sinister light on the walls and floor of the common room, reflecting in the blue eyes of Avatia’s father as his face contorted into a grimace.

 

The child could feel the force of her father’s anger slam into her, could feel it boiling and rising through the Force that surrounded them. It hammered against her heart and her mind, sent waves of fear through her small body. She could hear his thoughts, could almost see them as they flowed through his mind. This was his home, his wife, his daughter.

 

The trio of intruders arranged themselves in something of a loose triangle – one hooded figure in front, the other two behind and slightly to his sides. Avatia watched the lead man take a single step forward, could see the paleness of his skin and the darkness of his eyes beneath his hood as they regarded both of her parents, sliding from one to the other before focusing on her, glimpsing her from where she stood, partially hidden behind her father’s robes.

 

“Give us the child.” The man’s voice was sharp, deep and commanding. “She must go to Korriban.”

 

“No,” her mother told him, shaking her head, fingers of pale red tightening around the hilt of her saberstaff, the glow of its twin orange blades almost seeming to grow brighter. “She is to learn the old ways of the true Sith.”

 

“The true Sith?” The deep voice was now mocking, condescending. “You believe yourself superior because of the blood in your veins?” He scoffed. “Your ancestors were savages, animals. They were tamed by the humans who came to them, gave them technology and spaceflight, shared with them greater knowledge of the Force.”

 

“You know nothing of which you speak.” The woman’s voice was edged with barely-controlled anger, her body full of tension, like a coiled snake ready to strike.

 

“No?” An eyebrow arched sharply beneath the dark hood. “They interbred with humans, because they knew humankind to be superior to their own. Even now –“ a sinister smile spread across his face as he let his gaze drift between Avatia’s mother and father, “you take a human as a mate, further diluting the blood you call ‘pure.’ The child goes to Korriban, but you –“

 

His hand stretched forth, holding his blood-red lightsaber, pointing the glowing blade at the Sith woman. Leaping forward, he brought his blade around in a swift, powerful slash that would have taken the woman’s head clean off her shoulders, had she not managed to duck beneath it. Her staff swept in at his legs, coming in low to the ground, missing its mark as he jumped over it, his body rising into the air to somersault over her head. His heavy boots struck the floor, and Avatia could feel the ripples in the Force as he gathered it to himself, landing in a crouch behind her mother’s unprotected back. His hand, fingers balled tightly into a fist, slammed into the floor before him.

 

A powerful shockwave rocked the ground, spreading out as it traveled from its point of origin beneath the man’s fist, knocking Avatia’s mother from her feet. The two other intruders moved forward now, rushing toward the man who stood in the doorway of his daughter’s room, their lightsabers blazing, hissing and crackling through the air. His free hand reached out, smacked into the control panel next to the door, bringing the barrier down between his attackers and his child, blocking their view of her, and her view of the battle in the common room.

 

Standing there behind the door, Avatia closed her eyes tightly, bringing her hands to cover her ears – for even though she could not see the fight, she could hear it, could hear the sound of lightsabers clashing, of furniture being toppled, glow-globes crashing from the ceiling to break upon the floor, littering it with shards of glass. Something heavy hit the door to her room, and the child jumped back, her eyes flying open as the door’s frame cracked, and the wall bulged inward alarmingly.

 

Through the sound of battle came a high-pitched cry – her mother’s death wail, Avatia realized, as the Force around her seemed to warp, shrink suddenly and then expand again, leaving her gasping for air as the breath froze in her lungs. Her father’s roar of rage was as loud as thunder, shaking the walls of their home, ripping small cracks in the ceilings, causing a small shower of debris to fall into the girl’s dark hair. She clutched at the datapad in her hands, tried to will away the fear that consumed her mind, fear mingled now with grief for the loss of her mother.

 

Again she heard the hissing sound of clashing lightsabers, and she shook her head violently, finally pushing the fear aside, stepping toward the door. Her hand reached for the control switch, hesitated briefly before touching it, causing the panels to fly open.

 

Carnage greeted her eyes - the crumpled body of her mother in the center of the floor, surrounded by bits and pieces of the objects that had filled their home, a neat hole burned through the center of her back. Her clothing had charred, stuck to the blackened skin that crusted the edges of the wound. Next to her lay the corpse of one of the intruders, the hood of his robes fallen back to expose a face that had partially melted off, skin and flesh peeled down to the skull, exposing the white gleam of bone.

 

Next to where Avatia stood was another corpse – a second of the invaders, whose body was twisted and contorted, slumped against the wall beneath the wide, shallow crater he had created when he had been thrown into it. The impact had broken bones, and one of those bones must have pierced something vital inside, for it protruded from his chest, dripping still with the dark red liquid that had been his life’s blood, pooled now beneath him. The man’s eyes were still open – his face still wearing an expression of surprised pain.

 

Avatia’s heart constricted painfully in her chest as she took this in, absorbing all of it in under a second, as if her mind was taking images of the scene and then filing them away in the darkest recesses of her consciousness, to be taken out and viewed again later. Her father and the man who had led the intruders to their home still dueled, their attention absorbed by each other’s movements, their lightsabers flashing crimson and deep red as they clashed again and again.

 

“Father!” The word escaped the child’s lips before she could stop it, before she could keep herself from calling out to him.

 

“Avatia!” Distracted for but a moment, his head turned, his blue eyes glimpsing his daughter standing in the door to her room. Time seemed suddenly to slow to a crawl for the young girl – the Force around her began to boil, rushing through her at an incredible speed, despite the deceleration of the world around her.

 

It was like watching a holodrama in slow motion, and her horrified eyes were drawn to the shadowed face of the stranger, watched a malevolent grin lift his lips as his opponent’s momentary inattention gave him the opening he needed. Up went the blood-red lightsaber – up and back, held tightly in a two handed grip, a grip that suddenly shifted as his hands reversed the hilt of the weapon, pointing the tip of the glowing blade downward. Before Avatia’s horrified eyes, the lightsaber stabbed outward and down – it sank into her father’s chest, wisps of smoke curling up and around the shaft of coherent light as it superheated his skin and blood, cauterizing the wound as it went, piercing easily through layers of muscle and bone.

 

The murderer’s eyes flickered toward the young child, caught and held hers as he pulled the blade from the wound, causing her father’s body to slump to the floor, his lightsaber still held in his right hand, while his left arm extended outward, as if he were reaching for his daughter. His dark blue eyes – eyes that had always seemed to her to be full of knowledge – glazed over, unseeing even as they stared at her, stared through her.

 

Time returned to normal as his death suddenly hit her through the Force - a painful throb throughout her entire being that drove her to her knees, set her ears ringing as her hands came up to cover them, as she choked back the sobs that threatened to wrack her small body. Her little fingers tangled in her hair, tore at it, pulling wisps of it from its carefully arranged knot at the back of her head. Despair filled her soul – all that she had known was gone, all of the opportunities she would have had to learn what her parents could teach her had been taken from her.

 

The sound of heavy boots striking the floor in front of her caused her to look up, to see the looming form of her father’s killer standing over her, looking down at the child on her knees with a dark, twisted smile on his face. “Get up,” he told her, reaching a heavy, gloved hand down to grasp her upper arm, tugging her to her feet.

 

At his touch, her despair turned to rage. Anger unlike any she had ever felt in her short life suddenly flooded through her, tightening a cold fist around her heart, her lips curling into a snarl that would have almost looked comical on her childish face, if it had not been so sincere. Her hand slipped to her belt, pulled out the twisted, curved vibroknife she had tucked there. Her fingers wrapping around the hilt, she brought the weapon up, slashing its sharp edge toward his face. She felt it connect, felt the satisfying sensation of the blade digging into his skin, sliding it from the center of his left cheek upward toward the bridge of his nose.

 

He jerked his head back, a thin line of blood appearing where the blade had made contact with his flesh, a surface wound only, but a painful and surprising one. His other hand reached for her wrist, grabbed and twisted it, applying pressure until her fingers went numb, causing her to drop the blade. As it fell from her grip, he caught it in his own, chuckling softly – a sound not of amusement, but of sinister intent. “A little warrior, are you, mongrel? It seems you need to learn what happens when you don’t mind your betters.”

 

His hand drew back, came forward to catch her across the side of her face, an open handed slap that resounded through the room, snapping her head to the side. She felt the sharp sting of tears filling her eyes, but willed them away, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. He gripped her now by the front of her robes, just below the throat, dragging her toward the hole that he had come through. The jagged edges of the door frame hung askew, letting in a breeze that ruffled the fabric of a tapestry that hung on the wall – a painted image of an ancient Sith ritual, handed down in her mother’s family for generations.

 

A sneer came over the dark-robed man’s face as he saw the artwork, and his hand reached out, his fingertips brushing across it as he dragged Avatia past it. A ripple pulsed through the Force, and tiny sparks of lightning shot from his fingertips – not a torrent of energy, but just enough to set the threads of the tapestry alight. A spiderweb of flames raced through the image, blackening it, destroying a piece of the history that the young girl’s mother had been so proud of.

 

The burning tapestry fell from the wall, touching the carpet, sending more fire throughout the room. This ignited the remains of the furniture, the curtains covering the windows, and the clothing of the corpses that lay scattered across the floor. Avatia shrieked in anger and rage as the flames touched her mother’s robes, licking up and over the dead woman’s body, raging now in her hair, burning it from her scalp, her eyelashes turning to ash under the onslaught of hungry fire.

 

The man tightened his grip on the young child, who struggled now as he pulled her from the building, as he crushed her back tightly against his body, holding both of her arms still with one of his own, leaning down to press his lips close to her ear. A shiver of fear raced up and down her spine. “Watch them burn,” he commanded her, his grip like a durasteel vise that would only tighten if she tried to escape it. “See what happens when you defy a member of the Dark Council.”

 

Avatia had no idea what the Dark Council was – and she didn’t care. “I hate you,” she said, the words choked off at the end by an involuntary sob. “I hate you!” She tried to escape his grip again, wanting nothing more than to run back into the burning home, to go with her mother and father to death. “I’ll never do anything you say!”

 

She could feel the heat of the flames kissing her face, the house now completely engulfed by the raging inferno. With a creaking groan, the roof collapsed, sending a shower of sparks through the air, an explosion of tiny fires that rained down around Avatia and the dark-robed man who held her captive against his body. He stepped back to avoid being hit, pulling her along with him.

 

Twisting her body, the lithe little girl slipped downward as he moved, escaping from his grip, gathering her legs beneath her to run, though now she had no idea where she would run to. But it seemed as if her eyes had done nothing more than blink before he was standing in front of her again, and she saw his hand go up at about the same time she felt it connect with the side of her face once more, this time knocking her to the ground, dazing her.

 

She rolled to her back and lay there, groaning softly, trying to focus her eyesight. The sky above was cloudless, except for the plume of smoke that rose from the smoldering remains of her home, and she had the fleeting thought that it seemed strange that the sun would be shining so brightly on the day that her childhood ended. She could hear the man – her captor, moving around, but could not see him, could see nothing but the empty azure sky and the film of rage, grief, and fear that covered her sight. Her face ached where he had hit her, her heart ached inside of her chest.

 

She both heard and sensed the man returning to her, felt him kneel down beside her. His hand reached out, gripping her chin, his fingertips digging into the soft skin beneath as her turned her face to look directly at him. “It seems you are a slow learner,” he whispered in a tone that sent shivers racing through her mind. He brought his free hand up, and Avatia found her eyesight finally beginning to focus – sharpening enough to see that he held the knife she had slashed at him with. Its twisted blade glowed white-hot, as if he had placed it in the coals of her parent’s funeral pyre. “You may require a permanent reminder of what it means when those like you forget your place.”

 

The knife came close to the delicate skin of her face as he lowered his hand, holding it mere centimeters above her flesh, letting her feel the searing heat. He watched the fear in her eyes grow, watched as she swallowed around the lump that had formed in her throat. It was as if he drank it in, her fear, and this caused her heart to thud painfully in her chest, caused her breath to nearly stop in her lungs.

 

Then the pain came – the agonizing sensation of the knife being pressed to her skin, the sound of her own sizzling flesh, the smell of it as it burned, like someone was frying meat on a stove. The pain came, and then it was gone, only to return again as he lifted the blade, applied it once more to the side of her face, branding her over and over with a pattern of his own design, as if he were creating a work of art. With each touch of the scorching hot metal to her face, Avatia fought back the urge to scream, found herself instead biting her lip so hard that it bled, the coppery taste of it filling her mouth.

 

Finally, he stopped – whether because she was about to pass out or because he was simply done she didn’t know. Casually, he tossed the knife aside, standing up and reaching for her arm, tugging her to her unsteady feet, gripping beneath her shoulder as he forced her to rise. She glared at up at him, not bothering to struggle now – a waste of energy better devoted to stoking the fires of hate burning within her heart. Her yellow eyes – eyes the same shade as those of her mother – stared at his face, memorizing every little detail – his hawk-like nose, thin lips, dark brown eyes. “I’m going to kill you,” she said softly, through lips that trembled with the pain that shot through her face. “One day when you least expect it, I’ll be there.”

 

His dark laughter filled her ears. “Perhaps. But today you go to Korriban.”

 

 

 

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Hope you enjoyed!

Edited March 4, 2015 by silvershadows