Vitar'ii Sylas

Biography: 
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength.
The funeral was where it started. Father laying cold and motionless on the viewing table. The med droids did what they could reconstructing what was left to be passable as a remnant of what the man once was. At the tender age of six, few things shattered one's foundation as deep and to the core as seeing your Father, the man who in your mind, controlled the sun, the moons and every facet of the world you know, laying there with half of his face reconstructed. The plasti-mold and cosmetics no more living than the picture hanging beside his coffin, more to remind the living of what once was rather than what is left. The bottom half of his uniform still covered by the coffin, the medals and campaign ribbons contrasting brightly against the dull gray Officers Uniform of the Imperial Navy. All the new people nothing more than faceless apparitions, too tall and unfamiliar for a six year old girl to be bothered with remembering their names or faces. They were kind, almost too kind, as if they were all playing their roles for each other’s benefits.
I was young, but not young enough to gather my suspicions about the men who paid house visits from time to time, sometimes not leaving till the early morning, knowing they where not my father. Every time a uniform jacket was laid haphazardly on a couch, or a uniform cap hanging by the door I thought it might be Fathers. I would wait by the door through the laughing, giggling, moaning and raucous noise, knowing that soon Father would open the door and I will be there to hug him, Just as I would wait for him by the door when my nanny would let me know he was on his way home, in the life before. Before my new mother and my new sisters. They were older than me by a few years and could not be bothered with me. They were too old to care and I was too young to be of any use to them.
Sometimes the door would open and I would be awake, sometimes I would be asleep on the floor, but for the past year every time the door opened, I would be confused, 'You’re not Father?' The look of scorn following the briefest flash of surprise and guilt from Anise, my Stepmother. After a couple of times, I didn't have to guess when men would come over, I’d know because Anise would lock my door in advance sometimes not allowing me out well into the next afternoon. I was too young to completely grasp the situation, but I was sure Father would not be happy. A women screams dramatically and weeps gripping the coffin, Anise. All dressed in black, her waist being held by one of her more regular visitors pulling her back away from the coffin solemnly. I grew angry, a flicker, more in my core than any particular physical place in my body. A flicker of hate for that woman. It must be her fault Father did not come back, perhaps she didn't love him enough to keep him safe or perhaps the numerous times she spent yelling and arguing with him during his holocalls made him not want to come home to me. It doesn’t take much to spark a fire, even in the heart of a six year old girl.
Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory.
The next couple of years where a blur. Anise sold everything I cherished, everything I had from what I call the life before. The life before Her, before my older Step Sisters, before my father laid in that cold Durasteel coffin before being ejected into reentry orbit just over the Imperial Base where we lived. A mere couple of seconds of light streaking across the night sky, buried in a last final show of glory, before being returned back to the universe in the most basic of forms, energy. Energy, something you could see, feel, even hear. You never think about it deliberately, because who has time for such abstract thoughts. Yet it was around. I could feel it. People could smile but I could feel their pain, their sorrow, their guilt, and with every passing look from Anise her scorn. She kept me around because my Father had left me everything. Unfortunately all she could receive was an allotment, and keeping me around was her paycheck as my sole guardian. Sometimes I would think I should be grateful that she keeps me, I have heard stories of children growing up in the slave colonies and in some of the backwater underdeveloped planets. At least I was fed regularly. My clothes weren’t too bad, hand me downs from my Sisters and second hand stores. At first I did not think nothing of it, but when I started noticing how my clothes where more worn then my school mates, or how they had nicer things than me, or toys that I would never get to play with. I began to grow suspicious. I began to question and with each question I was beat harder and worse than the last. Eventually the beatings did not hurt, for in my mind this was just the way of things. Just as the man she took on as her husband would beat her, so she would beat me. It’s amazing what the mind of a child can cope with as acceptable when you just push a little further each time. By the time the old wounds heal the fresh ones cause you to forget the pain from the old scars. By this time my step sisters had moved out, they had cared little for me. I only existed long enough to do them favors or do their chores when they were tired of doing it themselves. If I refused they would conspire to get me in trouble with Anise, so it just behooved me to do it quickly and get it over with then to be dealt with by her. Her new husband gone within a couple of years. He was bearable, but not kind by any stretch of the sense. Most of his time was spent chasing the end of a bottle and being yelled at constantly by Anise.
By the time I was 16 my stepmother spending more time on stims and spice was barely coherent enough to care let alone beat me so I ran the house. I kept it reasonably clean, picking up after Anise, feeding us, and even bathing her when I found her laying in a pool of her own vomit. School was over and I was toying with the idea of enlisting into the Navy or going to trade school, maybe learn to farm dirt on some faraway planet. Anise would always have unsavoury people around. Lowlifes and vermin, so I became accostumed to locking myself in my room to keep her and her friends away while the binged. How Ironic, as a child she would lock me in to keep me away, as a teen I would lock her out. One night I got a call from Anise, I came downstairs and she was on the couch, her head bobbing in a haze of smoke, her eyes barely able to focus, her skin a sickly jaundiced yellow, standing there in the room was a large filthy man, unkempt and dirty, his eyes glaring lecherously at me as I came down. "There she is, she’s worth at least a half rack of Ryll Tubes". He snorts as he tosses her a bag the clinking of the tubes left it undeniable what it was, so many of those tubes I had cleaned up after the day or week long bingers Anise and her friends had. It took me a second to process as it happened so fast, my hair caught up in his hand as he twisted me around, forcing me to move with him, I screamed out for Anise, who was already prepping the first tube, her body going limp as she melted away, smiling ecstatically as she dove deeper into her chemical haze. His foot behind my knee forcing me to ground as he laid his weight on top of me. Then it sparked, and flickered, and burst into a flame so hot and burned so deep I was consumed by it. The very walls of the house could not contain the force of it.
The flashes of memory where enough to tell the tale. Splinters of wood and duracreet flying across my vision, the man shaking his head as I approached where he landed halfway across the house, the pressure I could feel in my hands as I clinched them in the air, almost as if I was pushing squeezing an egg, yet the man’s gurgling, whimper of pain and bulging eyes told my mind it wasn’t an egg or empty air that I was clenching and just like the notional egg that popped in my hand his skull cave in into a pink bloody mash of flesh and bone. The furniture around the house flew about haphazardly as I cleared my way like a tornado looking for Anise. My skin seemed like they were on fire, my eyes burning form the pressure building inside of me Anise looked up still not quite processing as I reached out and grabbed her by the throat. I lifted her up well more than any 16 year old girl of my stature should have been able to do she looked down fear in her eyes, her bladder voiding its content down her legs, her feet kicking and her hands clawing pathetically weak at my arm. A push and she was rammed into the wall behind her, a gesture and she was lifted back up and flung into the wall in front of her. I tossed her about the house, against wall after wall. from floor to ceiling and back again. There was nothing left to her besides a pulp, an unidentifiable husk of meat. No more recognizable than a slab of flesh purchased at a butchers stall. Then it subsided. The rage, the anger dies, but this time I did not allow it to go out. This time I kept it burning on the inside, barely visible, barely there, just a small tongue of flame you might find as a pilot in an old heater. Just barely there until you needed it, until you feed it the fuel it desired. I stood there for a second and surveyed the scene more remorseful of the damage and the hassle it would be to clean and cover this mess up. The shattered windows and the gaping holds through some of the walls held my curiosity for a moment before time slowed and the door exploded open. A mass of yells scream and electro batons instantly caught my attention as I was beat down into the darkness. Except this time I wasn’t alone, my spark was there keeping me company, keeping me warm, and lighting my way as I swam through oblivion.
Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Life is lived through moments. Moments of time gathered together by snapshots of reality stored and processed in your brain as memories. It is those memories that tell you where you been, what you have experienced. No more real than the pictures displayed on a wall or next to a coffin. Yet you know it because with each memory comes an ache or pain, bruise or scar, that reminds you that yes this is real. It is the events of our lives that define us. It makes us who we are and chains us to our fate. Had Father lived, while my childhood would have been great, of that I am sure, I would have been condemned to the fate of a mediocre housewife raising children for some young brash Officer looking to curry some favor by making a name for himself other than being the one lucky enough to win my hand in marriage. Who knows how long it would have been with the ramp up of hostilities between the Galaxies many factions, and skirmishes, before he would have won his own coffin, and final blaze of glory as it is ejected into a re-entry orbit over our house. After having been classified as an adept by the Law Enforcers, rather than being sent prison, or slave camps, I was allowed to enter into the Imperial Naval Infantry. My abilities where growing every year, I learned a new way of life. Hard, cold, calculating, and simple. Training, tactics, battle formations, reconnaissance, counter insurgency, counter rebellion. everything I would need to know about combat, battle, and strategy I learned there and then some. I flourished. I could run farther, hit harder, jump higher and in the stickiest of situations where me and my team where written off as lost, we survived and come out on top more often than not. I was eventually commissioned, being provisioned and groomed for a special project. One of my superior officers, having experienced people with my talents and abilities passed my dossier over to a friend he had stationed in Korriban. It was shortly after he briefed me about this Temple on Korriban where they can show me how to truly unleash my talent and abilities and tap my potential more than I ever could on my own. I chuckled at him, with all due respect of course, 'Sounds like a bunch of superstitious Monks, Sir.' He smiled and shook his head telling me stories of the Sith Warriors he had worked closely with. Their raw power, their passion, their strength. The flame flickered as I listened intently, like a bit of flammable liquid being squirted over a tiny flame it ignited, my core burning, aching for the chance to know more; to want more. After a while the stories were not enough, I researched in my off time everything I could till eventually there was a call I was to report in immediately. My orders had come in: ‘As of now Lt Sylas, you are to stand detached from the 525th Special Combat Regiment, Imperial Naval Infantry and are to report in for duty to Overseer Tremel at the Sith Academy on Korriban.’ Simple enough, suspiciously vague for orders yet they were real and in my hands. Finally after the years of hardship and pain, I would finally learn what I am and what I can become. The force, that flame within me that I kept burning all these years feeding it when I needed it, tapping into, using it, allowing it to wash over me and consume me, has surely broken my chains and allowed me to choose my own fate and destiny. A quick look outside the window as the transport shuttle approached the landing pad. Well this planet certainly was not much to look at, but the feeling, the drawing, it’s almost as if the entire planet itself was sucking me nearer to it, and my flame, buried deep within me was pulling me closer to the planet.