Private Argent

[Simon Meinrad]

C A V A L I E R
DANTOOINE
Siyndacha Aerin

What was once a Jedi Enclave was now converted into an academy for future warriors of the Imperial Knights. The Jedi once could walk through these halls under Imeprial rule, though that was during the reign of Tavlar. Things had evolved beyond his death, but the late Imperator was a domino effect for those things to transpire.

The idea of the Enclave buried underneath by the Empire was praised by Simon. Perhaps in his youth he’d come to be offended by this debacuhery, but now he was wise enough to see through the Jedi as much as he did with the Sith.

Peace and order was something to fight for, something the Jedi could never seem to understand. They trusted their destiny to the Force instead of forging it themselves.

“Ah, I see you’ve arrived,” talking with bud back facing to his latest apprentice, feeling her aura as she walked into the chamber. Interesting woman from what he could learn about her dossier. Interesting, yet suspicious. A lucky survivor spared by the blade of an Imperial Knight. Had it been Simon, he would’ve have shown such tolerance. “Tell me about your late mentor. I’ve never had the opportunity to come across him.”

Wanted to know how she thought and see if she was compatible underneath his guidance.

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

ERRANT HEIR
THE ORDER OF IMPERIAL KNIGHTS
DANTOOINE
Simon Meinrad

When she had received the message that she was to meet with a possible new mentor, nearly a full year after Rafe’s death, she frowned. And at first, her thoughts were dismissive of it. She had gone this long without the guidance of a senior knight, through grieving, assessments, and the accordance of the rank of Knight-Errant in the spring, along with a nigh-immediate assignment as an attaché to the 501st under Kriegan Tavlar , in the wake of Ilum.

Now it was autumn, and with the message staring her in the face aboard the NIV Dissident Aggressor in the days following an interesting diplomatic assignment on Kestri, her thoughts relented, and reason prevailed. If the Order thought her still in need of guidance, who was she to question it? How could she truly know that she was prepared for otherwise? She had never at any other point been anything other than an initiate, except when it came to her martial arts.

Of course, there was doubt - not from her, but them. Caution. Well deserved, she knew, from her past. A past that, as a child at the time, she had little control over. A thing that drove her to give others no reason to doubt her in every way within her control.

She stood in the structure of a former Jedi Enclave on Dantooine, her silvered gaze not so much fixed on the turned back of the man she was here to meet, as it was rested there, her thoughts thrown back to her first personal loss in her years with the Empire, and beyond, by the request that she speak of the late Rafael Therian.

Aerin was silent for a handful of moments while she gathered her thoughts on the man whom she had ruminated on less and less as time put distance between her and his passing.

“Knight-Commander Therian…” she started, pausing to take a slow breath; it was perhaps still uncomfortable - in a somewhat painful way - to crack the seal on the subject, “...Rafael… Rafe was a good man.” Her brow knit faintly, as she continued, “Compassionate. Firm. Perceptive. Zealous. Wise. Unforgiving, Uncompromising, when necessary.”

That had been her first experience of the late Imperial Knight, when he slew the… thing that had torn her from her home and attempted, for four years, to warp her beyond recognition.

“I was…” she swallowed, “...terrified of him in the first minutes that we met; he had just slain the Sith that called himself my Master, but at the same time I was relieved at being freed from that... cretin, and Rafe saw that,” she smiled, faintly, “He was always able to see right through me.”

A necessary thing, in separating her from what had been done to her.

“I know all too well that I might have been dead if it had been any other Knight on that day,” she admitted. "I'm... not sure what else to say."

​

 

[Simon Meinrad]

C A V A L I E R
DANTOOINE
Siyndacha Aerin

He listened to her monologuing, back still facing her. From the words she described of her late Master he seemed to be a Knight whose values would mirror Simon’s. Though it seemed, in contest, Simon was more extreme and zealous than Rafe. Being charitable to a Sith Acolyte was dangerously ignorant, even if there was a chance to redeem one’s soul from the veil of darkness.

“It would seem,” finally turning around to look at his latest apprentice, face emotionless which was hard to tell if he was bothered by this assignment. “It would seem your master was not all too wise, letting you live and bringing you to our ranks. If were him at that time, you wouldn’t be shown any mercy,” and there was the tone that would determine the beginnings of their relationship as Master and Student. Disrespecting the memory of Rafe before Siyndacha and even going as far to tell her she would’ve been dead at his blade.

He had his reasons to be skeptical about her. There was always the chance she could go rogue. Probing her to see how’d she react to his unfriendly demeanor.

“Under my guidance, Knight Aerin, you will find I am uncompromising to a fault,” and began to walk towards his apprentice. “I trust you do not have a bleeding heart like most whose emotions distract them from their duty.”

He was trusted to train a warrior for the Empire, and the only thing he expected was his investment be promising to serve the will of the Empire. Which meant not to fall from his standards of what was expected from Aerin.

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

ERRANT HEIR
THE ORDER OF IMPERIAL KNIGHTS
DANTOOINE
Simon Meinrad

When he turned, the very first thing she noticed was that he was visibly scarred, up front, as she was. Not in precisely the same manner, but as soon as he started to opine on the subject of her late master, her notice of that similarity between them faded. As did the faint upturn of her lips, her mouth assuming a line.

Did it hurt? Some. But a year on, the knot of emotion associated with the loss, the thing that might have driven her to tears back then, was weakened both by time and reasoning. She had poked, prodded, and picked the event apart over the weeks and months that followed it, and amongst the possibilities and considerations that occurred to her in that time, was the possibility that the very thing which had caused Rafe to allow her to live might have cost him his own life. A possibility that had been full of anger towards him, for a brief time.

She knew what had happened - the reports were clear - but she couldn’t profess to have known the contents of his mind that day.

All in all, the elder knight wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. He wasn’t treating her in any manner she hadn’t already been subjected to on countless occasions, for one reason or another. Such that when Meinrad walked towards her, her jaw was halfway to tense from the disrespect, but a half-deep breath, loosed as a nasal sigh, released the vague tension. So she would be proving herself again, then. Fine.

“I was his student, not his clone,” she said flatly, folding her arms. “You will find, Master Meinrad, that I am very clear on the matter of extremists.” Her succinct term for those at either end of the spectrum of the Force, painting them with the same brush. “Close to twenty-six millennia of their conflict, and no end in sight? By any metric that is an abysmal failure.”

A fact she only knew from her grandfather’s teachings, when she was a child. A fact that had in part been responsible for her minor interest in history. A fact that played into his disillusionment, when he had ended up electing to leave the Jedi to focus on raising his then-young family, many decades past. And he had chosen to remain neutral and uninvolved, which had its own issues.

​

​

 

[Simon Meinrad]

C A V A L I E R
DANTOOINE
Siyndacha Aerin

Was it disappointment or a surprise to hear her response as he was probing her? He expected rebellion from her, arguing back against his words, and be tensed against him. Instead she was calm and collected. A testament to Rafe’s teachings or just the experience throughout the years has matured her.

“Hmm,” challenging her eyes with his own, intensely staring down at the Echani. “Then you will come to understand my own extremist ideals have no deficiencies compared to the dogmas of the Jedi and Sith,” and suddenly his hand with an open palm pushed Siyndacha with a mild Force Push. Enough to knock her down on her feet.

“Come,” and his own lightsaber came alive with an argent blade no different from the rest of his brethren in the Imperial Knights. “Let us see how true you are to your own will, my apprentice.”

The Empire was a state born from the iron will of men. This was a demonstration to see her will in action.

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

ERRANT HEIR
THE ORDER OF IMPERIAL KNIGHTS
DANTOOINE
Simon Meinrad

He spoke of himself in some few words as having extremist ideals, and her own ideals were ultimately the same. There was nothing bucolic about what they espoused. She had seen both sides of that supposed coin and been left wanting: her own ideals had begun to take root on the battlefield at a young age, seeing the conflict for what it was with her own eyes, well before imperial doctrine and the guidance of the Order had given those ideals structure and purpose.

It was nothing she would call fate or destiny; quite simply put, she had been receptive. To believe otherwise would imply she held no power over her own path, which was far from the truth. The past decade had been a series of decisions - the decision to not lash out in fear was the first of the many, and the latest was the one that put her in this room.

The invisible shove caused her arms to unfold as she stumbled back, regaining stability on the second and last of her rearward steps, and retraining her gaze on elder Knight at the moment he called for her to approach with word and the telltale snap-hiss and static-like buzz of his own silvered blade. One of her own hilts was in her hand when scarcely another moment had the opportunity to pass, but the ignition wasn’t thumbed so quickly. The blade would be the same argent shade as was common, but the hilt itself, like its twin that still dangled from her side, wasn’t standard issue.

She remained evenly calm, softly and slowly placing one foot ahead of her, then paused, “Do you know why there’s so little hard data about redemption?” Another step. “Sample size is much too small.”

There were a number of inferences that could be made about the dogmatic… obstacles to galactic order on the basis of that one fact. It could even be a joke in the right context. A third step saw her lunge into the fourth and bleed into a forward surge, only bringing her hilt to bear and thumbing it alive in the barest moment upon entering his space, with a hard, diagonal swipe.

 

[Simon Meinrad]

C A V A L I E R
DANTOOINE
Siyndacha Aerin

He was surprised to see how collected she was. Most would act out in anger, charging without a plan on how or where to attack. Was it a blessing to inherit an apprentice like the Echani before him? Already trained and disciplined, only needed to smooth out the edges before priding himself in producing a terrific knight for the Empire.

He considered it, but he wanted to test her further. See how much he could dig down what was buried beneath. Everyone had a breaking point.

Interesting tactics when she closed the distance and activated her lightsaber at the last moment. Simon wouldn’t be hesitant or compassionate as he swung his saber the moment Siyndacha closed in. A heavy horizontal swing only to be intercepted by her own slash. Locking with her blade, his feet pushed off in order to drive her back and make her lose balance. A sudden kick to her gut again create distance between them, no matter if successful.

“You might want to her use your other saber,” taunting her. “To give you a chance against me.”

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

ERRANT HEIR
THE ORDER OF IMPERIAL KNIGHTS
DANTOOINE
Simon Meinrad

Blade met blade in a sharp crackle, minute movements from the press of argent against argent eliciting a kind of electric ‘scraping’, moderate errations in the joined hum in the short moment before he sharply shifted his weight into the exchange, forcing her onto the back foot again, for which she compensated, stepping back with the other foot. The immediate follow-up with his own foot was the kind of play she had a longer familiarity with, and was deftly blocked by briefly raising a leg and having it land against her thigh.

“You might want to use your other saber,” he taunted, “To give you a chance against me.”

One corner of her mouth twitched upward at his words, “Confidence,” she mused, “or overconfidence?” A rhetorical wondering; she did not reach for her other blade, but instead stepped forward with one foot, “Do try to best me first” lunging a jab at him with her blade, “before you start offering suggestions, hm?”

And rounding the opposite leg in for a sharp, snapping kick to his knee.