Private Academic Intervention

[Vestra Tane]

DESEVRO
THE RED LIBRARY
READING ROOM
TAGS: Neriah Calven

People didn't tend to peg Vestra as the bookish type, not at first. She looked (and acted, often) like your average borderline-illiterate, moderately sociopathic Sith lunatic. In truth, of course, she was an only slightly sociopathic and remarkably well-read Sith lunatic. Today, for this meeting, she'd leaned into her more academic side; trading in her coat, ragged and reliable, for a set of Chandrilan lounge-robes, and remaining lightly armed. She had only her lightsaber at her side, and none of the myriad knives or explosives she normally availed herself of.

This state of affairs displeased her. There was a war on. Blood to be spilled. Battles to be fought. And here she was, correcting pedagogical errors.

In the bitter cold of Desevro, Vestra exhaled, breath visible, before pushing open the ancient stone doors that marked the entrance to the Red Library. Dust and old sheafs of paper and the slightly dry, fragile smell commonly present in truly ancient libraries were all picked up by the wind and carried outside, while the Sith made her way in.

Immediately, her mood brightened perceptibly. Books tended to have that effect on her. She gestured with a synth-flesh covered hand for her press-ganged guest to follow, though she didn't wait.

"Walk with me, Neriah. Any idea why I had you dragged all the way back to Desevro?"

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[Neriah Calven]

Tag: Vestra Tane

"To show your superiority. To teach me pain. To drill into me how weak I am. The usual."

If Neriah resented that, or had any strong opinions about what she had just said, it wouldn't be evident. The manner she walked, the way she talked, none of it gave away how she felt. Some might have said it seemed as if she was bored, but she was far too...alert for that. Her gaze flickering amongst all of the books. Memories of what little literature she had owned being torn up on her first few days at the Academy.

"Perhaps I'm being relegated to sort out the books here. Made to be nothing better than a Librarian, for how lacking I am in combative skills."

It wouldn't come as a surprise to her. Neriah had made it readily apparent to most of the Acolytes and Instructors who interacted with her that she had no drive when it came to fighting. No longer did she have a roaring fire of anger and wrath inside of her, for it had burnt out. Throwing her upfront into a fight would have just made for a body wasted.

"Either way. I'll do whatever work you instruct me to do. I'll survive yet another day unfortunately. And then it'll be rinse and repeat. Over, and over, and over. Pain. Suffering. Nothing else matters."

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[Vestra Tane]

TAGS: Neriah Calven

"Please."

She laughed, and it sounded almost pretty, in the same way that a very, very shiny knife was pretty.

"If I wanted you to hurt, I woulda left you with Arris."

Her hands brushed along a row of books as she walked. The texts in the reading room were all more recent editions, or otherwise sturdy enough to handle being pawed at by clumsy acolytes and experienced Sith alike. Finally, she stopped, and wrapped her fingers around the corner of a particular volume. Aidajas iv Hâsk - Echoes of Anguish, in basic. She tucked it under her left arm, and kept walking.

Meanwhile, she looked back over at Neriah.

The girl did an admirable job of hiding how she felt on the surface. But if Vestra peeked at her with the Force...

Chit.

A wave of reflexive empathy washed over the Knight. Her left hand, the one with a real nervous system, twitched, and her face softened for the briefest moment. Neriah was familiar to her, in a way she didn't like dwelling on. In that same instant, her expression hardened again. Sulfur crept in from the edge of her irises, and a wave of static crawled across her chest.

Rage was comfortable. Rage was safe.

"Has Arris actually been teaching you anything, or has she just had you fetching and killing for her like an akk hound?"

Gone was the carefully crafted gutter-scum accent. Now the Sith sounded regal, almost imperious. And her voice dripped with disdain, not for Neriah...but for her colleague.

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[Neriah Calven]

Tag: Vestra Tane

"...We were meant to be actually taught things here?"

It wasn't meant to come off as some snide or sly comment. If anything, it seemed like an actual question. From all that Neriah had seen, the only thing getting taught at the Academy was pain and suffering. Only those physically gifted seem to excel, or those who were willing to replace their flesh and blood with machines and circuits. As much as Neriah might have felt as if she was nothing better than a droid deep down inside, with no will or emotions of her own, in all reality, she was still very much a living breathing human.

"She gives me orders. I follow them, like I should. To the letter."

Her gaze flickered over towards Vestra however at the sound of disdain, alongside the slight twitching of a hand. Neriah was strangely good at being able to listen and watch. Information gathering seemed to be something that she was good at, surprisingly so. Not that she cared much to give away what she found out. She wasn't asked to. Nor did she need to.

"...So to answer your question more directly, no. She hasn't taught me anything. Nothing that has went in, to say the least."

As the Sith peeked into Neriah, she'd be met...with a void. Not so much a Darkness such as one would expect from a Sith, nor the Light that one would expect from a former Jedi. Both the warmth of joy and wrath would be missing, with only a cold hole where it should be. She was...rather simply a blank page. Both inside and out, she had seemingly realised that it was simply best not to feel. Nothing mattered. She would not accomplish anything. She was not strong. She was not charismatic. She was barely smart...Though of course, as someone who was still living, still breathing, there was still emotion. Buried deep down inside of her. The emotions of a still quite young woman, sobbing her heart out in a dark void. Sobbing too quietly for anyone to hear. Not even herself.

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[Vestra Tane]

TAGS: Neriah Calven

"She gives me orders. I follow them, like I should. To the letter."

Bile rose in the back of Vestra's throat. The lightning that arced across her body grew, and she bit her tongue until she tasted blood. The next words came out through gritted teeth.

"...She's supposed to be teaching you how to be Sith."

She ignored the unsettling implications of that failure for now. Easier to swallow that her colleague was simply a poor instructor than the alternatives.

"Many Sith are killers. And some are scientists, or sorcerers, or academics."

Her fingers traced the spine of a particular tome, bound in tukata leather. She knew this one well; it was a collection of Sorzus Syn's notes on early biological alchemy. It was never her specialty; she didn't have the knack for it, and though she could've learned, she felt her time was better spent on what she was best at. Still, she had an academic and aesthetic appreciation for the field.

The servos in her hand whirred, and her fingers tightened until the book's spine snapped.

"What we aren't are weapons, and I am beginning to get the impression that my colleague has missed the distinction."

Now she practically radiated rage, an uncontrolled and uncontrollable font of infectious anger made visible only by the occasional arc of electricity that managed to travel a few feet from her person before fizzling out or exploding.

She kept walking. They were descending, now; past the tidy neatness of the reading rooms and down into the storage levels, where the walls were rough-hewn stone and the inventory wasn't sorted so much as it was piled.

And then, in the dim light, she smiled. It was almost friendly, and may have been as close as she could manage, either at the moment or ever.

"Do you like books, Neriah? You seem like the type."

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[Neriah Calven]

Tag: Vestra Tane

"I'm not a Sith."

Simplicity. It wasn't denial in the sense that she believed herself to be better than one. That she still believed herself to be a Jedi. No. That ship had sailed long ago, right about the first time electricity had escaped from her fingers. When that anger had boiled up and released it. Anger that was so absent in her now.

"Nor am I a weapon. I am...a tool. Without a purpose. Without a goal. To be used, until discarded. Or snapped."

At the snapping comment, her eyes went towards the spine of the book. There were perhaps plenty of Acolytes that would want to do the same to her. Her mind would have let it happen. But she knew that if it came down to it, her body would defend herself. A disconnect between the mental and physical. A disconnect that sorely did not care for.

She had no wants of her own anymore. The main one had been for the pain to just all stop. And it had stopped now. Replaced with a numbness that had spread through her entire body. It was both a blessing and curse perhaps, as she felt the rage radiating from Vestra...but seemingly didn't react to it. Not even blinking. Yet deep down inside, that sobbing girl whimpered to herself, crawling and digging herself deeper and deeper away from the surface.

"I can not compare to the other Acolytes. Their progress far exceeds my own. Varin, even with his Bantha-headness and wanton destruction is in the good graces of most. He acts superior. Attempts to lead us. The bleeding heart Acier stands out. People believe he has a strength, has potential. Ghruna seems far too oblivious to care about anything other than destruction. And Kirie...Those four are Sith. Far more than I am. I am simply...viewed as a coward."

A tool. It was what she was. Plain and simple. An effective tool. She could kill. She could destroy. What she couldn't do was lead. Grow. Make anything out of herself.

"...I did like books. An eon ago. Before I came back to my collection destroyed. Ripped apart for nothing but cruel enjoyment. Alongside my spare clothing. My glasses."

And once again within the deep depths of Neriah's being, that girl sobbed again as she relived the memories. Memories that had stung so much. Had filled her with sorrow and anger...That now only seemed to bring a shrug out of her.

"Books will get me nowhere here."

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[Vestra Tane]

TAGS: Neriah Calven

"Varin is an idiot and Ace is..."

She didn't finish the sentence. Not the way she meant it - Ace is a rat.

"Ace isn't worth your time. They're both meatheads. Ghruna is alright. Kirie is..." She shrugged, and she sighed.

It wasn't much of a pep talk, but she figured that a pep talk wasn't what Neriah needed to...undo whatever she'd done to herself.

Vestra associated primarily, and in fact almost exclusively, with people whom the best Jedi healers and mundane psychologists the Galaxy had to offer could spend years just diagnosing, nevermind treating. Despite that, she'd never seen someone this detached from themselves - at least not before getting their head caved in, anyway.

The aura of rage surrounding her receded, by millimeters at first and then completely. Partly because she willed it to be so, and partly because...the rage itself had died, ever so slightly.

Something else was, thankfully, creeping in to fill the gap.

"Books will get me nowhere here."

Vestra ducked beneath a flickering, cobweb covered ceiling lamp. When she turned back to face Neriah, she was grinning again.

"Well, that's a shame. Because we're looking for a book." She un-tensed her left arm, and allowed the book previously held in place next to her ribs to fall into her hand. "This one has a companion piece. Songs of Wrath. The subject matter is more advanced, more dangerous, so it's kept away from most of the Acolytes. But I get the feeling you'll have a knack for it. Can you read Sith?"

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