A/N: First of all, sorry for the incredibly long hiatus. In addition to being busy with my original publications, I've taken four part-time jobs upon myself though I hope to soon remove two of them and trade for one with greater hours. I've also been helping a friend with his own original project and related fanfiction works. On the subject of this material, I used to be a member of a Star Wars RPG guild that I once enjoyed but I had a falling out with them and have since resigned. This story is based on a path I wanted to take with one of my characters before I resigned from the site. I also took some inspiration from God of War 4, particularly where themes occur as well as things I would've done if I were righting the story... with the adoption you're about to read being one of them, hint hint. That said, hope you enjoy this!

Star Wars

The Hyperion Journeys

Echoes of a Bygone Age

By

Christopher Cleveland

Prologue

Ando Prime was normally a quiet world, cold but quiet as the wearied warrior liked. First arriving on the precipice of taking revenge against the brother who turned their parents against him, the bald human warrior was now broken and alone. Defeated by his own pride as much as the Jedi Sentinel who had freed his brother and the companion he'd managed to capture, he now wandered the snow without reason or purpose. He knew he was never going to get his revenge, the Jedi had seen to it that if he survived, he wouldn't be able to escape Ando Prime with his life.

Defeated... again as he had been so many times before, discarded like old pieces of flimsiplast whose use had ceased when their information was copied in the Archives of the Jedi Temple. Like the Sith Emperor called Vitiate was said to have done to his own people in favor of loftier goals than even the Empire could ever hope to have claimed for him. And all he would have was the silence, the endless tracks of snow occasionally broken by some small settlement that scrounged and scraped by to survive even as the Jedi claimed to help them. However, where he could actually believe that his brother Dantius would try to help whoever he could, he doubted the Jedi had time for the people they should've been protecting in fighting the Sith. This day, however, would mark the first time there had been any real action that he could witness in weeks.

Beyond the space battle he was witnessing, life carried on as much as it had since he had arrived less than a month. He watched the machinations of the Jedi and Sith unfold but watching was all he could do now. Discarded... disgraced... defeated... abandoned once again as it has seemed the Force wills every time I have pursued revenge for my brother's travesties against me he thought. He had managed to make repairs to his mechanical arm which told him that he at least knew how to ensure his survival but he wasn't sure he knew anything more than mere survival. Did he even want to know anything other than this life he had been left to by a brother he had wronged yet had begrudged when Dantius locked him away for several years?

He only knew his skill, his breath which shone as mist upon the vast emptiness that sometimes seemed to mirror the gaping maw of the Dark Side itself in oblivion. But he wasn't alone, he could sense that much through the Force. He also knew that the intrusive presence that dared enter his tomb of ice and solitude, far from the war between Light and Dark Sides of the Force. However, there was something unusual about this one, something different that he knew he didn't usually sense in a single isolated incident as much as several entities at once. It was the presence of someone dying, something he'd felt before and too often to count: hell, he'd been the reason it'd even arisen, dozens of times.

It took some doing with the snow being more than a third of a meter deep in some places but he finally arrived to the source. A refugee ship had crashed, likely because of the Sith Marauders that were attacking the Republic cargo ships above. Among the bodies was one woman, an Iridonian Zabrak if her horns and patterns were indication. "Please... good sir," she began. Before he could ask what she was talking about, she produced a bundle from beneath her stomach.

The cloth was somewhat stained with her blood but not so much it would leak onto the contents. Using the Force, the human known as Hyperion unwrapped part of the bundle to reveal her baby beneath the clothing. As far as he could tell, the child didn't have the Force but he had never known what it was like to sense it in infants, having never done so before. All the same, he could sense something special about this child, something that just may result in the Force. Even so, he couldn't simply take the child as he had never raised a child before even though he produced one when he raped a former lover of his brother, if only to spite him.

"I have been called many things but good isn't among them, ma'am. How do you know I will not take the child only long enough to see you die then leave him to the elements?" Hyperion replied.

"He is my only child... you can offer what I can no longer give... Please, take him," she begged.

"If you were too weak to protect him then your line deserves to die with you both. The safety of your child is no concern of mine," Hyperion told her. It was all he wanted to say, never mind the fact he had killed children was young as that one before. If she had any inclination of his true nature, she would not be so willing to give her child to him and he knew it all too well.

"Whatever you think... you are... it isn't... so. Take my child... prove it... so! Save him... please," she asked, whispering the last words. Her final breaths were exhaled in those moments, leaving only the baby which began moving and squirming as the cold awakened it. Hyperion merely walked away, his training as a Sith Warrior calling for him to abandon the weak to their fate.

In the end, their destiny was to serve as the stepping stones of men like him on their path to greater power. But then, how much good had been the life of a Sith warrior been for him? Hell, how much good had the whole kriffing Dark Side done him in his year serving it? In combination to the baby's crying growing worse, Hyperion decided that maybe a new path would serve him better. Maybe the Force was calling him to leave behind the more power-hungry and ambitious tenants of its Dark Side.

Circling back, he scooped the baby up with his left arm and whispered assurances as best he could. He'd never tended to a child before and he wasn't sure he would have the ability to create a new life when he had spent almost all of his youth butchering it. Who knew? Maybe he would finally find the path to peace he had been looking for, far from the eyes of the brother who thought he'd had him killed.

Looking around the bundle, he was curious to see if there was some kind of tag with the child's name on it. He was pleased to find that there was one and a name he wished he had been given when he was born. The child's name was Menelaus, like a great warrior that existed in Hyperion's childhood home. Last Hyperion had heard, the man had died a great hero to the people... perhaps this child would become an even better man to others across time and space.

Eleven years later...

Chapter One

In the days following Menelaus' unofficial adoption, Hyperion had his mother cremated. According to a note he'd found on among her surviving luggage, her will was to be burned then have her ashes carried to Dathomir and disbursed when Menelaus was of age. He had kept the ashes though why he did so was a mystery: he could've just disbursed them anywhere he pleased without either one of them knowing. And what would it have mattered if he could kill the boy with a flick of his wrist and the activation of his lightsaber? But in the effort to forge a new life, he decided it would be best to let time and patience show him what to do with the ashes and the boy.

He also put away his lightsaber and his old suit of armor which was a knockoff of good Mando'a suits anyway. Favoring clothing more suited to the climate, he also used materials from the wreckage and what scraps he could find beneath Ando Prime's snow to make new weapons. A whip with a hook that could tear out a vertebrate of a humanoid spine was on of his first achievements as well as perfecting it and tougher animals. He'd also customized scraplets that became his shuriken projectiles completed with a wrist mounted dispenser that could shoot out six at a time on each side of his forearm. When all else failed, he also had a spear made with cortosis tipped head and shaft that he could use either for dueling or as a javelin.

He also stole two Republic soldiers' vibroblade knives, one for Menelaus and one for himself, and made a bow that Menelaus could use to learn to hunt for himself. Hyperion had also fashioned himself an ax out of some of the durasteel that he could use to cut down trees for their cabin and the firewood they'd need every night. Last but most certainly not least, he also created a multi-layered shield with the frontmost layer forged in cortosis for durability and phrik alloy for lightweight carriage. The spear also came with collapsibility so that Hyperion could carry it over longer distances especially as age began to catch up with him. Whenever he wanted to avoid using any of those weapons, he stole several rounds of ammunition and a pistol with which to use them.

He also stole one for Menelaus and created a cache of ammunition from which the boy could draw. When all those weapons failed, Hyperion did for him what he had once done for the Nautolan Padawan Inoy. He taught him what he remembered of his Echani martial arts training in case the boy was ever being abducted. "On the journey ahead, to fulfill your mother's wish," Hyperion once said, "we will be attacked by all manner of people. Some will want us dead for looking at them wrong, others will want to interrogate us for things we did in defense of ourselves. The point is, we will only have ourselves to trust completely and without any real hesitation at all."

Menelaus had taken well to the lessons, having never known a single thing about who his father was and probably a good thing as well. Because Hyperion not only knew only a little more than he did but wasn't sure how Menelaus would've responded to finding out that he didn't even know the name of the boy's sperm donor. It also would probably fly in the face of the image the boy had come to believe of him if he told him he nearly abandoned him to the elements as an infant. In fact, Hyperion had found it better to either redirect or ignore the boy's questions about his past and keep to the education that he was being given wherever possible. Whenever Menelaus fell asleep for the typical ten or twelve hours that boys apparently tended to sleep, Hyperion meditated for four hours then practiced his lightsaber exercises with a smoothed staff he had carved when he vowed he would never use his lightsaber again; he also practiced his Force powers to keep all edges sharp in case he should ever need them again.

But the more he did so, the more the voices of the past he swore to leave behind threatened to consume his sanity and spit out what remained for Menelaus to deal with. Each time that happened, each time he felt the void of the Dark Side beckon to him, he ended his training in time for Menelaus to wonder what he was doing even as he was still half-asleep. However, there was one time where Menelaus was preparing firewood for use to keep their house warm and Hyperion was able to train alone. That was to be the time that everything changed, that the galaxy finally found its way into Hyperion's quiet exile on Ando Prime. He was meditating after completing yet another round of training when he heard the crunch of someone approaching in the snow.

There wasn't any way that it was Menelaus: the steps were too big, the gap between crunches was too long, and there was something different about this one. The presence approaching didn't have any of the signs which hinted Force-sensitivity but he didn't doubt the would-be invader of his sanctuary was still dangerous. Opening his eyes, he said nothing as the Twi'lek man approached, a broad-shouldered man of exceptional condition. Probably a soldier or ex-soldier in one of the warring armies I fought against in my youth Hyperion silently guessed. The twi'lek also carried the standard weaponry of a former soldier, Havoc Squad by the looks of his insignia or what remained of it from the years of wear and tear the paint had taken.

"Huh, thought you'd be a bit more scary. But you're definitely the one I've been searching for: been lookin' for you fifteen years, boy!" he said. Hyperion didn't say anything verbally but hinted at his inquiry with a slight raise of his eyebrow. Otherwise, he didn't change his stance or prepare for combative capability right away: out of his prime though he was, he knew he was still formidable against this guy if he needed to be.

"You were one of them Sith blokes that wiped out my boys early in the war. Done killed my whole team and assumed I was dead on the way out, back on Nar Shaddaa," the Twi'lek said. Hyperion decided the time for storyteller was over and ask the most important question that had yet been answered.

"You'll have to be specific. I killed a lot of people on Nar Shaddaa during a lot of trips there. Why should I remember you?" he asked. It wasn't a question of spite considering Hyperion did regret the sins of his old life, but one based on remember that that planet alone held a higher kill count on his part than almost any of the other planets or systems he'd visited.

"I was one of the first Republic soldiers to arrive on the scene when you and that Weequay and a Nautolan Padawan tore up the joint of a Hutt named Kublai. You tore yourself free of your mechanical arm and when my squad came to take you in for questioning you killed all but me. But you left a note and an amulet on my brother's buddy that the kid found," said the Twi'lek. Seth al Ugolio, that name still burns its way into my mind sometimes, Hyperion want to say, but the name of the Nautolan burns even hotter into my soul. He was the only one who believed there was any good in me, the only one who tried to bring it out too.

There were times when he regretted leaving the amulet of his forebears in the care of then-Padawan Inoy Llimetch, who'd only joined Hyperion and Seth out of necessity. He was trying to find his way back to the Jedi Temple after losing a mentor and had been stranded until Hyperion and Seth found themselves in need of a third gear. "I'm pleased he obtained it and content to have survived... even if I wish I hadn't killed your squad brothers to do it," he said aloud. In the entire time the conversation had been occurring, Hyperion had been readying a shuriken to shoot out one of his wrist mounts to destroy the soldier's rifle.

"Normally, I wouldn't pursue revenge but I was one of the first asked to pursue you when the Jedi were making their cleanup efforts. Said it might do some good to use soldiers like me to draw Sith scum like you back in the open for them to slice down," said the soldier. Have the Jedi found me? Has he found me? Hyperion asked himself grimly.

"I'm afraid you won't be wanting this fight, I can promise you that," he warned aloud.

"Actually, I'm certain I do. You don't have your kriffin' lightsaber and I got a blaster rifle that'll make the whole top of your head into a canoe with one frackin shot. Surrender to me and we'll make this nice and easy for ya, whaddya say?" snapped the soldier.

"Dad?" came the distant shout of Menelaus. The soldier wheeled his head to see who had said that and Hyperion used the time to launch the shuriken at the midpoint of the rifle. Consequently, he essentially sliced it in half with the little projectile which wasn't phenomenal since it was made of a combination of phrik alloy and bits of Mando'a iron.

"Foolish soldier, it isn't the weapon that makes the man better at fighting. It's the mind of the man that makes the weapon deadly, rapidfire capabilities and damaging bolts are no substitution for true skill. Peace has done you a disfavor, boy," Hyperion said, applying the slightest bit of Force suggestion to perform dun möch. He then wheeled himself backward and unfolded his legs so that he could rise up to full height, which'd see the Twi'lek staring at his chest if he were close enough. Knowing how soldiers like him tended to operate, Hyperion wasted no time in using the Force to activate the one thermal detonator he observed on the man's utility belt.

The soldier was fortunate that he was quick for he would have been little more than a burnt crisp if he hadn't thought to unclip his belt and dive-roll out of the blast radius. With only one cart of six shots in the chamber, the Twi'lek shot through the smoke that resulted from the explosion, hoping to score a hit though all six didn't even come close to reaching the older human. He's got youth, soldier's training, and he's angry. I've got the Force, superior martial training, more experience, and a level head thought the former Sith. "Ah hell, I wanted a chance to kill you with my bare hands anyway," said the soldier right before he charged.