Chapter Six
Hyperion found himself in blackness when he "awoke" in his ethereal subconscious. His skin was not pitch black like his surrounding but he couldn't see anything, not even the outlines of objects. That was when he heard the familiar laugh of Morgana, mocking him for what Crassus had pulled off on him. "Nothing but darkness lies ahead for you, Hyperion Algethii," snapped Morgana. There was a strange echo in her voice as she spoke which was where Hyperion figured out he was in some kind of ethereal fight for dominance of his mind.
Knowing there was no other way to win the fight by standing still, he proceeded forward as best he could, even knowing that danger lied ahead. As he proceed forth, the outline of his ethereal shell changed from having a tattered loincloth he recognized from his youth as a gladiator, to the gauntlet he was most famous for carrying into those bygone battles. Since the fight ahead would take place in his mind, he conjured the wrist blade he usually collapsed into the gauntlet when he wasn't fighting and produced when he had a battle ahead that he had to win. As he kept walking forward, parts of the armor he presently wore began to take shape on his body along with the helmet he had used when he attacked Ashlynn's family on Lorrd. This set full, the only thing he was missing was a lightsaber to wield in battle against Morgana but even this was soon solved for him despite his chagrin at the choice of weaponry.
"Search your memory, Hyperion," Morgana began "did you not wield this lightsaber around the time you ravaged my sister? Did you not use the gauntlet you now possess to eliminate her suitors, hoping that she would give herself to you when she saw the dead pile up? What about the helmet of your battle against Ashlynn Thorin's family in order to spite your brother, hoping to rob him of all love and joy in his life that he may be as miserable as you?"
He knew what she was trying to do with these words, knew she was trying to make him give up his body to her by reminding him of the atrocity of his past. But he kept marching on, knowing that if he could just make Morgana manifest and defeat her in single combat, he would win back his body. That was when light began to illuminate his way, showing him the path to the destined battle with Morgana and his freedom from this havoc upon his psyche. He first saw a vestige of the past that glew red as the blade he'd wielded when he was a young man but, aside from a three-dimensional outline, had nothing that stood out until Hyperion heard them speak. Suspicious, he stopped and watched as the female figure carried something that he could only recognize as a child of about five years of age.
"Hurry, get our children inside the ship! Quickly, before father finds us!" begged the woman. The man turned Hyperion's way and called to him, beckoning his child to join him in the shuttle with his wife and youngest son, Dantius. Hyperion marched forth but when he had taken no more than three steps, the man's expression turned from beckoning to one of abject horror and Hyperion remembered why. Hyperion watched his father shake his head, denying what the child had done even as he saw it done before his eyes.
"Hyperion, what have you done?" his mother demanded. Emerging in front of him was the towering figure that Crassus had represented in Hyperion's youth. At one point eighty-two meters, Crassus had been an imposing figure in his last human form even when Hyperion was fully grown. But as his ethereal shell assumed the physicality of his eight year old form, Crassus became the Titan the boy had remembered.
He watched all over again as his father bravely stood his ground against Crassus and attempted to kill him to no perceivable avail. Crassus was simply to quick and too strong for his son and Hyperion watched all over again as Crassus grabbed him by both hands so hard, he dropped his blade. Then he watched again as Crassus raised the Crown Prince up by his wrists and disemboweled him, cutting up to his chest cavity before deactivating his blade and tossing the corpse aside without a thought to pity or remorse. Hyperion knew what was coming next even as his head threatened to split apart from the pain of his past rising up before him as if to squeeze out every last cell of his physical brain and burn it to nothingness. But he powered through this pain and when he did, he was not only back to his adult form but he was also being confronted by Crassus.
"The Dark Side consumes everything that it lays touch to. Those who wield it merely buy themselves time from being consumed by their own possession of its power. But you had a perfectly wonderful chance to live your years as a god and you squandered it to your guilt over what you did in the name of the Dark Side. Confront these demons, whatever you may think they are, and lay them to rest if you are to have any hope of becoming a powerful Force-sensitive. Embrace your darkness, admit to your deeds, and you will know the stability of mind that elude even the Grandmasters of the Jedi Order," Crassus told him.
Hyperion looked on the shape of Crassus, the lightsaber in his hand and still ignited as if he hadn't yet spilled the blood of his own children with it. Still, the younger man knew exactly what he needed to do, knew exactly what he had to say in that moment to make that image disappear. "Your training could not break me, the hands of death could not touch me even as there were plenty of ways I should've been dead, and Morgana has thus far failed to destroy me. You will be no different, captive to the past as you are!" Hyperion snapped back at him.
"You will learn to fear me, boy, or you will die," Crassus said, raising his lightsaber as if to perform a backhand swiping arc.
"I already did learn to fear you when I was your slave just as the dog learns to fear reparation from its master for misbehavior and misconduct. You already scared me witless as a child but now, you are no longer existent. My cousin beat you and your soul cowered within my mind until you learned of his death and that of many of the colleagues who joined him in taking you down!" Hyperion said, daring the phantom to strike him down. When the specter of his grandfather finally tried, Hyperion braced himself for it and was pleased to see the image dissipate into a ball of white fire before the lightsaber blade could make contact with him. His mission here completed, he followed the fireball to where it led, onward in his fight against Morgana and her attempts to possess his body, mind, and soul for her own nefarious resurrection.