Private A Scholar at the Edge of Ruin

[Meri Vale]

Meri watched his hand withdraw, her breath held tight in the back of her throat as she braced for a reaction that never came. She had expected the familiar sting of anger, the heavy weight of disappointment, or perhaps that quiet, dangerous shift people often made when their kindness was met with resistance. Instead, he simply stepped back, a gesture of distance that unsettled her far more than a raised voice ever could.

For a long moment, she remained perfectly still, her fingers remaining twisted together in the defensive knot she had formed to weather a storm that had passed her by. Slowly, with a conscious effort, she forced her muscles to yield, letting her hands come to rest against the edge of the table where the heavy scent of old parchment seemed to ground her.

His words lingered in the stagnant air of the room. A claim that she had not yet asked the right questions. The thought made her brow crease in a flicker of confusion; it sounded less like a simple reassurance and more like a cryptic prediction of things to come. Yet, as he spoke of them not being enemies, the suffocating pressure in her chest loosened just enough for her to find her voice again.

"I did not think we were," she said, her voice sounding steadier than she felt as she looked down at the books. Her fingers brushed against one of the worn covers, carefully straightening the stack that had shifted during the weight of their conversation. "And I did not mean to argue with you," she added after a brief hesitation, finally meeting his gaze again. "I just needed to understand."

But understanding was a treacherous path, built on the questions she dared to voice and the answers that inevitably changed the world around her. Even now, she realized with a prickle of unease that he had moved past her inquiry without truly answering it; the mystery of what Kor'ethyr actually was remained between them, an empty space in the conversation he seemed content to leave unfilled.

When he told her she was welcome to stay, she studied his face with the same cautious intensity she might use on a crumbling ancient structure, weighing the risks before deciding if it was truly safe to step beneath its arches.

"Thank you," she said softly, the sincerity of the words mirroring the way she pulled one of the volumes closer to her. Though she opened the book, her eyes didn't immediately find the text, lingering instead on the unanswered void he had left behind. "I do not know if I will change my mind," she admitted, her voice falling so low it seemed directed more to the paper than to him. "But I will keep asking questions. That is the only way I know how to move forward."

With that, she looked back down at the page, the quiet, rhythmic rustle of old paper filling the silence as she forced herself to disappear into the text once more.

Varin Mortifer

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace

“I studied at Kor'ethyr.”

He spoke quietly, as he walked towards the opening of the temple gazing over the sandy dunes.

“For the past couple of years I have walked its halls and attended its classes.”

He paused.

“Then, purpose found me, and I found it.”

His gaze stayed looking out towards the red sands.

“It has kept me from attending more classes than I'd like. But, it has led me down a much clearer path.”

His hands slowly folded behind him over his lower back as his posture relaxed a bit, though he still stood straight.

“Kor'ethyr is a Sith academy. Thus it creates Sith. But it holds special classes for likeminded people such as you.”

He slowly looked over to her as she delved into the ancient texts.

“The ones who ask questions, digging closer to the right questions, the ones who admire ancient ruins and wish to delve into their history.”

He looked back over at the academy in the distance. The place he once called home.

“In most cases you are rewarded for asking questions. In some cases, you are led to more questions.”

He fell quiet as he thought about his time in the academy, before he then attended another academy on top of this one on Desevro. When most of his time was sucked into class attendance and traveling.

The busiest he had ever been.

“It's not for everyone. And I would not force that decision on you. But I can't deny that you would go far.”

Meri Vale​

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri didn't interrupt him this time, choosing instead to remain quiet and simply listen. Really listen, as his words filled the space between them. Her hands, which had been braced against the edge of the table like a defensive barrier earlier, now rested there loosely, reflecting a shift in her internal landscape. The tension that had held her shoulders in a tight, guarded line had begun to ease, dissipating little by little as his own posture softened and his tone lost that sharp edge of insistence.

When he finally finished speaking, she didn't rush to respond, but instead looked down at the ancient text spread out in front of her. Her fingers brushed the surface of the page with a light, rhythmic touch, as if she were grounding herself in the familiar comfort of ink and parchment before finding her voice.

Then, she slowly glanced back up to meet his eyes.

"I don't think I could ever truly stop asking questions," she said quietly, her voice steady and devoid of the defiance that had colored it before.

There was only a simple, grounded truth in her expression now. She tilted her head slightly to the side, considering his words with the same meticulous care she would use to study a complex architectural structure, mentally testing which parts held weight and which ones did not.

"If the day ever comes where I run out of things to ask…"

A small, almost shy smile touched the corners of her lips, softening her features in a way he hadn't seen yet.

"…then you should probably check my pulse to make sure I'm still breathing."

It was a rare, fragile offering of humor, the closest thing to a joke she had allowed herself to share with him. Her gaze drifted briefly toward the distant silhouette of the academy on the horizon before returning to the text, her expression turning introspective.

"I genuinely like the act of learning," she added, her voice dropping to a softer, more intimate register. "There is a peace in understanding exactly how things fit together, in seeing the logic behind the design."

She paused for a moment, letting the thought settle before she finished.

"I just don't think I necessarily need to belong to a formal institution or a greater cause to do that."

It wasn't a sharp rejection, not this time; it was simply a quiet clarification of where she stood and the boundary she was still carefully maintaining.

Varin Mortifer

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace

A small exhale left him with her humorous remark.

When she finished speaking he took his time, digesting her words. Taking them in and measuring his response.

“Those who don't ask questions, the ones who believe they know everything are truly ignorant.”

He slowly turned to face her, taking slow steps towards the table. His footfalls echoed off the walls along with Sinew's slow breaths as she relaxed on her personal bed.

“Those who start asking questions, never run out of questions.”

He stopped just before the table, his posture still relaxed and no sharpness in his tone.

“The galaxy is infinite in questions, though limited in answers based on the questions you ask.”

He paused to look at the tomes before her.

“But, if you know what questions to ask, you will receive a plethora of answers. Some you will not like, some that bring no satisfaction. Only a smaller bread crumb of trails to something else.”

He took a shallow breath.

“You are smart to know that you would be limited in an institution. However, it does provide resources you would not have access to as easily.”

He slowly took his seat in front of her, picking up one of the tomes on the table, the spine creaked as he opened it up. Dust fell from its cover.

His finger ran along the words that were written.

“For example, you would have an easier time translating certain languages if you were under a tutelage rather than trying to learn yourself. Though the self learned option is possible, it leaves far more room for error.”

His gaze found her face.

“I would recommend finding a master, or a teacher of sorts for you. You have limits, but with the right guidance, those limits will lessen.”

A soft smile came to him.

“As to who you would allow that to be, is up to you.”

His eyes fell back to the pages.

Meri Vale​

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri listened without interrupting, her attention fixed on him with that same quiet intensity she gave to puzzles that hadn't quite revealed their pattern yet. She did not rush to respond, letting his words settle and arrange themselves in her mind, turning them over carefully rather than accepting them at face value.

When he spoke about questions, something in her expression softened slightly. That part, at least, made sense. It aligned with what she already knew, what she had always known. Questions were not something you ran out of. They multiplied. They deepened. They refined themselves into sharper and sharper forms.

Her fingers shifted lightly against the edge of the table, a small, absent movement as she organized her thoughts.

"Languages aren't that hard. Usually."

It was not said dismissively, but simply, as though she were stating a fact she had tested herself more than once.

Her gaze dropped briefly to the tome he had opened, following the lines of unfamiliar script with a measured kind of curiosity.

"They have patterns," she continued after a moment, her voice steady. "Structure. Repetition. Even when they look different, they behave in ways that are…predictable, if you spend enough time with them."

She lifted her eyes back to him, not defiant, but not yielding either.

"Mistakes happen, but mistakes are part of the process. They show you where the pattern breaks."

There was a pause then, her expression shifting slightly as she considered the rest of what he had said.

A teacher. A master. Her fingers stilled.

"I understand the advantage," she admitted, her voice dropping to a quiet, reflective note. "But being taught also means being…directed. It means letting someone else decide which questions matter and which ones are simply noise."

Her gaze drifted from his face to the table between them, her fingers tracing a faint, invisible line across the wood as if weighing a heavy, unseen anchor.

"I don't know if I am ready to trust someone else with that map," she added. It wasn't a hard rejection—just the honest caution of someone who had spent a long time navigating the dark alone.

For a heartbeat, the silence of the temple seemed to press in around them, thick with the scent of old paper and the hum of distant wind. Then, the tension in her shoulders bled away, not into defeat, but into a tentative, fragile sort of peace. She turned her attention back to the open tome, the unfamiliar script catching the light and drawing her back into the safety of a puzzle.

"But," she whispered, the word barely more than a breath against the air. "I suppose some maps are too large to read without a second set of eyes."

She didn't look up, but the corners of her mouth tightened in a way that wasn't quite a smile, yet lacked the bitterness of before.

"I haven't ruled it out, Varin. I am just…still finding the right questions to ask."

The admission was quiet, deliberate, and final. A small bridge was built across a wide chasm.

Varin Mortifer

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace​

“Some languages do not present such patterns so easily.”

He spoke softly as he scanned over the book before him, his finger tracing over a line of words as he read to himself.

“I think mistakes are only healthy if you know how to recover. You can mistranslate something and never catch it until it is way too late.”

His eye picked up to look at her.

“You are very intelligent, I can see that. If you find a master who tells you certain questions are just noise, then you have found someone steeped in ignorance.”

He listened to her next words, she was not outright denying his offer, but she was not accepting. Her choice that he would live with, until she changed her mind.

If she changed her mind.

His back straightened and his hands entwined their fingers with one another as he rested his palms on the table.

“When you delve into ruins and ancient texts, what do you feel?”

His eye held a genuine curiosity within it, it was not often he met someone with such interests, and usually when he did they would always seem like they were too good to associate with him. They too would prove they were steeped in ignorance.

“Does it give you a sense of…”

The quiet hung in the air for a moment.

“Home?”

Meri Vale​

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri didn't offer an answer right away.

She allowed the silence to stretch, a familiar weight she used to measure words that carried more than their surface meaning. Her gaze dropped to the edge of the table where his fingers had recently traced the ancient script. There was a quiet, shared precision in the way he spoke, a deliberate care to avoid overstating what he didn't yet fully grasp. She recognized that quality; she respected it, even if she wasn't ready to mirror his openness.

His warning about mistakes lingered in her mind. It wasn't that she disagreed, but she understood the lethal gravity of a mistranslation. In her world, a single misplaced interpretation could become a permanent scar if no one was there to catch the error. Understanding relied entirely on the intuition to notice when something felt wrong, a sense she possessed but didn't always trust.

When he remarked on her intelligence, her eyes lifted to meet his, studying him with a clinical focus. There was no flicker of pride or sudden dismissal in her expression. Instead, her features tightened by a fraction, as if she were mentally weighing his observation to decide if it was a useful truth or merely a pleasantry.

Then, he asked what she felt.

Her gaze drifted again, not out of distraction, but turning inward toward a space that was far harder to map than the rigid patterns of a text. Feeling was imprecise and dangerously unreliable, yet she couldn't deny its presence. Her fingers rested against the table, anchoring her as her thoughts traveled elsewhere.

When he let that final word hang in the air, home, something in her finally shifted.

It wasn't a dramatic change, but a subtle closing off. A tightening at the corners of her eyes. She considered the word, not as a place, but as the heavy assumption he had attached to it. When she finally spoke, her voice was level, but it carried a new, stony firmness.

"I don't think that's the word for it," she said softly.

She looked back at him, her stare steady and direct, ensuring he understood she wasn't speaking lightly.

"When I look at ruins or old texts, I'm not looking for something familiar. I am looking for structure. I am looking for the evidence that something was built with intention, that it once made sense to someone, even if that meaning has been stripped away by time."

Her fingers traced an invisible pattern against the wood, a ghost of a cipher only she could see.

"If there is a pattern, it can be understood. And if it can be understood, then it isn't truly lost. It's just waiting."

She held his gaze for a heartbeat longer before her focus shifted, her tone turning clipped and factual, as if reciting the history of a stranger.

"I am from Panatha. It was destroyed."

She didn't add any embellishment to the statement; she didn't need to. The finality of it was enough.

"The concept of 'home' is a luxury of the living. For me, there is no such thing. There is only what remains, and the work required to make sense of it."

She let the silence return then, not as an invitation for comfort, but as a boundary. She had given him the truth, precise, deliberate, and entirely her own.

Varin Mortifer