Private Everything is

[Vesta]

peachy​

MAENA​

Zambrano Estate
867 ABY

"She is still in there?" Came the rasp of Vesta Zambrano's voice from behind a steel door, itself adorned with sith runes that drained the force as it was directed towards them, towards another lingering nearby. "Yes, mistress, she has made her discomfort clear." A servant - or perhaps a guard - answered, their tone betraying them a hint of their understanding, the Shi'ido was not quite as well liked as her mother had been or her father currently was. "Right." She responded, following a short sigh, and the sound of a lock clicking preceded the opening of the chamber door and the approach of the Sith lord. The other voice, whoever they had been, seemed to have left between then and now, leaving Darth Daiara and Darth Mori alone as she shut the door behind her.

The skin changer that stepped in looked markedly different than she had last they met, her hair was shortly cropped and there were two markings on her face, but there was no mistaking her for anyone else - not while she didn't will it. Her eyes, ringed with dark circles, emphasized the piercing nature of her glare, which she accosted the acolyte with visible disdain. There was so much potential in the girl but with so little will behind it to achieve it, a travesty in the eyes of the Sith. "You look like chit." She grumbled, tossing a lightsaber to the girl with one hand. "That is yours until you've behaved yourself well enough to subjugate your own." Vesta explained as she turned her attention towards a column to her right. For a slight few seconds she seemed lost in thought, her focus drawn momentarily elsewhere, then she turned both her focus and gaze towards the girl.

"Do you still hunger for more?"

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia flinched as the steel clanked and opened.​

Old habits, locked spaces. She was not unfamiliar with being confined. Grating metal was the sound of being broken in.

Vesta had given her plenty of time to reflect on her situration. She had grown remarkably calm over it. Calm was how she would control this. That calm was hard to maintain as she heard the door lock them both in. Her shoulders rose and fell in steady puffs, the bony corners sticking out like shoulder pads under her clothes. She had never had a lot of weight to spare.

"You look like chit."

Aradia snorted, her heart skipping at the saber dropped before her. Using it felt like a giving in. Or at the very least, admitting she was too weak to make use of her own.

Too weak.

It wasn't true. It wasn't true. The words echoed through her, as her fingers wrapped around the new saber's hilt. Pride never came before protection, even if it felt like betrayal to take it. The silence filled them both, her posture coiling as the calm continued to dissolve.

"Do you still hunger for more?"

Her eyes snapped up, boring into Vesta's. Her body shifted forward, as if to accept a gift, but there was nothing there. Only Vesta's words and her mistrust. She realized then how much her body had spoken for her. The intensity of her response shattered as she ripped herself backward.

She looked away, her chest pounding in trepidation. She knew better than go that route. She knew better.

"And if I said no?" She countered. The saber scraped across the ground, pulled closer... inch by inch.

 

[Vesta]

Predatory eyes kept careful watch on Darth Daiara as she reacted to her question - a smug smile already creeping at the corners of her lips at the shift in body language the girl exhibited. "You would be lying to yourself," She answered dismissively, her eyes momentarily catching the subtle movement of the lightsaber yet saying nothing. She gestured to the door behind her with an open hand, though she didn't turn to face it, and cleared her throat. "I could keep this door open at your discretion, you know - you just need to accept yourself for who you will be." Vesta intoned in a way that more or less implied she considered the notion far-fetched, painting a picture of how little she expected of the acolyte.

She shrugged, of course, as if the chance that Aradia would ever accept something as large a step like that was slim to none. Goading, perhaps, but it was something she either thought might be effective.. or just entertaining to her. "But you have been looking absolutely famished." She said as she started to walk towards her, arms hanging languidly at her sides like it was a chore to even have them - or to be here. "If you won't take it from me, apprentice, perhaps I can give you someone else to take it from?" Vesta teased with a grin, amused at the idea of throwing some vagrant to the girl and force her to drain them of whatever strength she could take. "An idea, I suppose, but really and truly let us push the past to the side, just admit you still crave that dominance and I'll give it to you and more - just think of what you could do if you had all of that power and someone to give you even more." Dark eyes swept down to keep a close eye on the saber she'd thrown, less subtle of her shift in focus than before.

"I could wear the face of someone you hate, really make this easy for you." She said, though she seemed to visibly think of something else as she spoke.

"Or someone you love."

 

[Darth Daiara]

The saber hissed to life, held up at the woman in an instant. It spoke of a threat she didn't say. This wasn't calm. She wasn't meant to be reactive. The light bounced off the walls, the wielder unable to hold it steady.

A beat passed, and then the arm crumbled back to the ground. The saber flickered out, her muscles burning against the strain. She was... a husk. Her eyes burned with anger as she looked back up to the woman that had put her in this state.

"Fine," she spat, the last thread of calm snapping. "I want it. I like it. Who wouldn't? I don't want to be like this. I hate it, I hate them, I hate you, I hate what I am. So what. So what," she screamed, her voice ringing through the room.

She clawed at the ground, forcing herself to remember what the what was. The who. The people. The lessons. The hunger was growing by the moment, her attention to it waking up the instincts Kaalia had taught her to suppress.

"There's a line we do not cross," she whispered, Kaalia's words finding their way past her lips. She closed her eyes, trying to force back the sensation before it grew larger than her.

"I will be your apprentice. Please, just not like this."

 

[Vesta]

The flash of red, the burning heat of plasma - there it was, the passion. As fleeting as it was the spark was still there, and with its appearance returned the Sith's interest in the girl. She kept quiet, watching as the acolyte collapsed under her own efforts, but made no effort to reprimand the girl for what could undoubtedly be construed as an attempt on her life - it was what she wanted, after all. The grin she wore, an apparent facade, slipped away as she let the mask slip, a grim look sliding into its place. She didn't relish the moment, not really, but that was the only way to tap into someone's hate - to make them think one could enjoy their suffering.

She blinked, as if surprised to hear Darth Daiara scream, but seemed more to consider her words than react directly to them, at least at first. It was curious to her that there was such a conflict in what the girl wanted, what she could have, and her behavior towards that. "A line?" She asked, breaking her momentary silence with a question that seemed perhaps genuine in nature. The Shi'ido moved closer until the only way to bridge the gap between them was to kneel, which she did. Their faces level, she peered directly into the eyes of her reticent apprentice with an expression that bordered on concern, though it was certainly a twisted sort. "Lines, dear apprentice, are walls we make out of fear and lack of understanding." Vesta said, her eyes narrowing with suspicion - suspicion of who could have possibly taught a Sith restraint of self. "The first lesson is always the most difficult, and it is the most important. Others will keep it from you to preserve themselves, I have no such illusions of my fate."

"As the master I hold all of the power - as the apprentice you will crave it. That hunger will remain for as long as you and I share existence, and perhaps longer still."

An existence she did not envy, she supposed, though it was perhaps a better life than the one she was crafting for herself. A better end, anyway. "If you fear it that fear will control you. We are Sith, we do not allow ourselves to be controlled by our emotions - we direct them." She held out a hand, small and pale though it was, and a familiar darkness built in it - a shadow that would draw the girl's hunger towards it. "Take. I will not suffer an apprentice that starves herself."

 

[Darth Daiara]

The worlds made sense.

In a way, it was a relief to hear them. She had been free falling since Kaalia's step down. The woman's choice had been so contradictory to the years Aradia had spent training under her.

It broke trust, and that crack grew larger in that moment, when Vesta normalized the conflict she felt. Had... Kaalia been holding her back? Would she be stronger if she had practice acceptance, instead of restraint? They were questions that needed answers, but she was too exhausted to entertain them.

And she was exhausted. Even before that barricade, before that war, she had been running on fumes for months. Vesta had only brought it to light.

Eye to eye, she was force to take in the woman and what she offered. Her guard lowered just enough for a voice of reason to find its way past her stubborn resistance. ...Wasn't this what she had wanted? A master to strengthen her?

The thoughts swirled, dissipating into the wind as the extended energy snatched up her attention. The shift happened so seamlessly, she didn't even feel it. She fell into the hunger head first, instincts guiding her. Dirt encrusted nails grabbed at flesh and dug in. The drain would hit Vesta like a train, no finesse or grace to the action, Aradia did not care. She was not longer there.

Veins of black grew across her cheeks, stretching for her eyes as she took, and pulled, and drank in the woman's energy. Color hit her skin in a soft flush, but that wasn't enough.

Aradia's other hand grabbed Vesta's throat, squeezing for submission so she couldn't pull away. Aradia wouldn't be denied a second time.

 

[Vesta]

The thin veneer of rebellion cracked as the conflict underneath the surface began to swell, the temptation offered by the Sith striking a cord in a rather obvious way within the girl's mind. Doubt and self-doubt were often discarded by others that wanted to force their views into the hearts and minds of their apprentices, but Vesta had found a gentler, even if still cruel, touch was often times a better way - she could direct the resentment she knew would be directed at herself towards others when they fell, as she intended to now. What better way to divorce herself of fault then to willingly give what the girl would likely presume to be a sizeable portion of the Shi'ido's strength? Like a wounded animal nurtured back to life by the clear sacrifice of another, she knew this would change their dynamic beyond captor and prisoner.

No matter how many times she'd felt it, still the rush of her body being drained of its essence forced her to gasp in audibly pained surprise. She said nothing, of course, despite the fact that it was the most opportune time to goad her into falling further, as she was certain her cousin would have if he had been in her place. It was important that the moment seemed genuine in order to sew the bond they would be forging together, to drag the two unknowingly closer in spite of Darth Daiara ' misgivings on their burgeoning master-apprentice duality. The pain of being bled dry was immeasurable, but to be drained of the force was as if to amplify that on an exponential scale - beyond human comprehension until the moment it was happening to them.

Webs of black spread across the girl's cheeks just before her hand was thrust at Vesta's throat, fingers curling around it like a vice. This, at least, elicited a response from her, just perhaps not one she'd expect - muted laughter that never reached her lips as she fed on her own pain, using it to, herself, consume the very world around them, depleting the ambient force energies that lingered in the air, in the ground beneath them, and even siphoning a modicum of stamina from hundreds of people for miles around. One of her hands moved, reaching for the girl's wrist, and squeezed it tightly, matching the girl's grip on her throat, but held her hand to it instead of trying to tear her away - like she was enjoying it.

"Can you understand it?" She asked.

Her words were intrusive, spoken directly into the girl's mind through a transmission of thought. "The hunger, girl." She elaborated, her face a strained red. "It won't be enough. It won't ever be enough." Vesta explained, looking directly into the girl's eyes as she let more and more slip from her and into her apprentice - punishing her for her gluttony with an addiction and hunger that wouldn't ever end. Still, she didn't seem to try to force the girl off as early as she had on Vjun, letting her take and take until she wasn't the least bit weary.. and then there was lightning, surging from the hand that gripped her apprentice's wrist.

A reminder of just who was in control.

 

[Darth Daiara]

She found herself on her back, staring up at the murky ceiling. The smell of a burnt sleeve reached her nose. It pulled her from the pain and euphoria that left her finger tips buzzing. Or maybe that was the residual electricity. It played along her unwitting fingers, like a battery pack fully charged.

A small hitch of noise caught in her chest with every rapid breath, a staccato of execration that almost sounded like a cry.

Vesta's eyes floated before her, even then. It was impossible not understand what the woman offered her. It was even harder to resist. And why was she? The fear?

And just where had that fear come from? Kaalia. Who had not given her a single ounce of strength the first day she had discovered this power. And she had been closer to death than this.

Aradia closed her fists, her whimpers dying out as she acclimated to the rush. Her breath grew steady, and then at last she stumbled her way back onto her hands and knees. She met Vesta's gaze, her eyes flashing at the tug that hit her core.

Oh yes. She understood now. She swallowed hard, raising her chin against a flash of fear.

"Why are you doing this? " Came the genuine question, as Aradia probed back for the first time. She leaned forward on the ground, trying to get a better look at the person who had pulled her from death. Twice. "What do you gain if I understand?"

 

[Vesta]

Base desires.

That was what all that lived were when they were reduced to their most vulnerable - in her eyes. An irresistible hunger had gripped the girl as she fed, and though it was a hunger that would have fueled her it was a lesson she would need to learn not about herself but of others, just as the Sith had learned on her own through torment she had endured. "In your words: a legacy." She answered, though her words seemed to drip with far more contempt for the word than honesty. She could see it, see the discomfort, the fear of what the girl could be, in her eyes. It bothered her, perhaps even visibly if the signs were obvious enough, but the reasons for that were likely as much an enigma as the Shi'ido herself.

"This hunger you feel is one that we all live with, you are just more aware of it now than you were before."

Her words came as she let go of the acolyte's wrist, standing up and looking towards the door - her eyes seeing passed it. "Others will not show you how starved they are until you have been bitten, and by then it will have been too late." Vesta explained, though the generalization was more cryptic than it was telling. "You were smart not to trust me as blindly as you could have, on Vjun, or you would have become little more than another toy soldier to be thrown into a war years from now." She continued, seemingly changing the subject as she turned her dark gaze towards Darth Daiara with a frown. "You could have been a terrifying force, a cloud of darkness that might have been the end for so many Jedi and enemies to either yourself or your master - a mere puppet on strings, or the average Sith by all rights."

Her eyes looked down, towards her own chest where a band that held no locket hung. Her jaw tensed, but she didn't seem to acknowledge it any further than that. "Manipulation is a less obvious manifestation of the hunger you feel, apprentice. You hunger because you drained the force itself, others hunger for reasons less clear - I for revenge, and for further reasons beyond that, others for the same satisfaction they receive from leading others along as you do from feeding on the force." Vesta explained while she turned and walked towards the door, a gesture from her hand signaling the girl to follow. "You will meet, and likely have met, people who keep you from moving forward, people who tell you of danger that they, themselves, have undertaken."

Her hand pushed against the door, it opened.

"Do not confuse their words and their concern with softer emotions." She said bitterly, as if she'd swallowed a mouthful of ash. "You chose a path towards being your own master, as I chose for myself. You must recognize when others will want to use you, when they use your feelings to pull you this way or that." The Shi'ido continued as she led the girl out into the hall, her hands raising this way and that as she spoke, and towards a stairwell that would lead them up into her family's proper estate. "I tell you all of this, girl, so you do not fail me when I rely on you." She paused with this, placing a hand on the rail that ran along the length of the wall and up into the home above. "People you thought were friends, family even, will look at you differently now, though they will pretend to behave the same." She continued walking at that, but her posture seemed more tense. "Just as you already know not to trust me implicitly, you will learn the same of the people belonging to your past - just as you will learn to let those that cannot help you move forward go when their usefulness has run its course."

Eventually they were in another hall, still on one of the lower floors, but there were rooms here. One such room, a plain thing with a crystalline window as its source of natural light and a door that had been left open, was where the Sith turned and stopped. "This will be your living arrangement, you will have time to familiarize yourself with it later. Further down the hall is where we will do much of your early learning." She explained, gesturing towards the singular door that marked the end of the hallway.

"It is also where we will be going next, you have much to forget before you can begin to learn."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia felt herself glide forward. Everything remained distant, curbed by the soft tingles that still crept through her finger tips. Reason screamed for her to smarten up. Pay attention.She was still in dangerous waters, thought it was refreshing that Vesta did not try paint it as anything different.

"Just as you already know not to trust me implicitly, you will learn the same of the people belonging to your past - just as you will learn to let those that cannot help you move forward go when their usefulness has run its course."

.. Aradia swallowed hard eyes scanned the provided room. "...Vjun then. The planet. Those on it. What happened to them?" she probed, a degree of intentional disinterest attached to the way she looked around the space. There was someone there she left behind. Someone she could no longer feel.

She knew what that meant. She kept it locked tightly in a box inside her chest. If she never opened it, it couldn't reach her.

She couldn't help the question as she started down the hall. A glance went over her shoulder as they walked from her opened door. Her eyes caught on the crystal window, a flickering nudge brushing her. She turned and left it.

"What have I missed?"

Her acceptance to the circumstance was unstated, but punctuated none the less by her quickening footsteps to Vesta's side.

 

[Vesta]

If there was warmth left in her, she might have smiled. That familiar lie, the sort of secrecy that was worn like a mask, covered the girl's question well, but it was something the Sith herself had engaged in far too many times to miss. The fact that she caught on, however, wasn't ever expressed - it was better that they kept their own secrets, it gave the girl a sense of agency and there was very little desire in the Shi'ido to rob her of what little there truly was now. "Vjun was a decisive loss for the Sith Empire, as I am sure you likely expected when you recovered." She said dismissively, her eyes narrowing at the thought of someone else she wondered about. "I don't know who lived or died, only that the Empire crippled itself in that fight, I don't expect it to last much longer, if it even survives the night in its den of upstarts and traitors smelling blood."

"There were other conflicts that took place between then and now, too." She mentioned as she turned towards the end of the hall she'd directed her apprentice's attention to prior, though she seemed to be speaking of them as if they were afterthoughts. "I would suggest casting thoughts of that dragon from your mind, the Empire was doomed to fall at its inception, as all empires are." Vesta said while they approached the door that marked the entrance to the room she'd repurposed to train the girl in. Pushing the door open, it swinging slowly inwards, the interior was lit with red flames running along the top of the walls that seemed unnatural in origin, especially as they produced no heat or smoke. "This was your predecessor's quarters, once. It suits you better, I think." She remarked, rather off-handedly, as they stepped inside.

It was the first direct mention of another apprentice she'd made, at least the first she'd openly made, but she didn't seem to care to elaborate on whoever that might've been or what might've happened to them - as if it hadn't mattered in the first place. "The room is lined with lignan crystals, a sort of.. mineral, I suppose.. that amplifies the dark side. Here you will train, you will meditate, and you will grow until you have chosen the dark over the light." Vesta explained, stepping towards the center of the room where the red light from the flames around them illuminated her completely. "There will be many trials you will face, which will come as you become ready for them."

"For now, we will work to forget what you already know."

She seemed to shift her demeanor at that, her eyes a cold glare centered on Darth Daiara .

"Starting with who you are."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia drifted towards the edge of the room, her expression reserved as she took the news of Vjun and the empire in. It was hardly a surprise anymore. She had followed Kaalia out long before the death blows had begun to land.

It didn't stop a twinge of anger from igniting in her gut. Not over the loss of the empire that built her, but over the fact that there were people out there willing tear things down just because it didn't suit them. Those people were the reason for everything she had done. Those people were the reason Zaavik was gone.

A still sort of calmness washed over her as she thought of him. Twice now, in one hour. It was a dangerous game she played.

She stamped it out before any other thoughts could follow, turning to focus on Vesta instead.

"No. I like who I am. Start elsewhere." She stepped forward, a curious look overcoming her. "Teach me to shift like you do."

 

[Vesta]

Her head tilted to the side, eyes narrowed, lips pressed down into a firm frown.

This was something she'd heard from many before, be it Quinn or just some plucky Jedi trying to talk their way out of their death, but it never quite stuck with her. Vesta, at her heart, didn't even feel as though her own name belonged to her any more than the faces of the people she killed and borrowed did; her entire identity, if it could even be called that, was an amalgamation of pretend names and faces or stolen lives she used for her own ends. Even her gender, and all the implications that came with it, was subjective to the shape she desired to take at a given time. Identity, in the concrete and absolute sense, was anathema to her - a being that wanted to remain abstract, amorphous, and pliable. Social constructs, like names or labels, were just chains to her, and as a Sith she could not bring herself to suffer them.

Still, she recognized this was something that she, and perhaps others that lived as shapeshifters to varying degrees of their own, were perhaps isolated in understanding.

"Teach me to shift like you do."

Shaking her head, a sigh escaping her lips as she brought her gaze back to the girl, discarding her initial desire to berate her for clinging to something as superficial as who Darth Daiara was. If she wanted to become as malleable as her master then she would steadily learn to shed her identity as she took on the many faces and shapes she would wear, whether she wanted to or not. Her arms raised and she crossed them under her chest, leaning to the side as she shifted her weight to one leg, and let her frown fade. "I am a Shi'ido, girl. What I am you will never be." She said, though she seemed to be somewhat amused more than disappointed - as she would have been if the girl had just begged for power, as she thought she might have when she rejected the instruction to leave behind her past.

"However," Vesta began, her features changing towards a face and stature she'd been tinkering with in her mind, a face that was entirely of her own imaginative design, "I can still teach you how to alter your appearance, but it will be incomplete without further aid." She said. There were signs of exhaustion under her eyes, wrinkles or bags that were too similar to the other to really determine without a closer look, but the youth of younger age was still very much present - if muted by the weariness that life had worn down on her, like a cliff worn down by time and wind and rain. "Alchemy is a dark path, girl, it is also a permanent one." Like before she seemed to be speaking more figuratively than literally, though there was some truth in the literal sense of permanence with alchemy, at least in its nature of change. "You will be forever changed, though you might adopt your former look and mannerisms at your own attempt to hold onto what you had been. Clinging to the past after that will be an exercise in futility, though - alchemy is a subjugation of the force and life itself through the dark side, and it is the only avenue you have to reach what I possess naturally."

This was punctuated by the sudden shifting of the ground beneath her into obsidian, a glossy black glass replacing its original gray, matte, duracrete surface before. "I may change this," She said, gesturing to the ground beneath her feet as it shifted back into what it had appeared to be before, "but it will never be the same as it was before." The Sith explained. "All change is permanent, in a manner of speaking. Every time you take another shape you will gradually wear away what you once were until you've forgotten what you were before, until each guise becomes as real as the face you wear now."

She seemed unbothered, and perhaps even not actually warning her now of this sense of change.

"I do not see this as something to be cautious with, but you seem to hold your sense of self in such high regard I am not sure if you have taken the time to understand the ramifications of what being like.. me.. entail."

She paused, thinking back to the moment she had first opened her eyes when life for her had began.

"My body, my name, and every facet of my being are just a canvas for me to paint what I desire into existence, whether that is for some clandestine reason or just to choose an appearance that has meaning to me, I find it much more fulfilling than to being chained by whatever society desires I appear or present myself to be. I am who and what I want to be, and if you choose to go down that road you will be, too."

"Is that something you are prepared to do?"

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia took a step back, a look of distaste barely contained.

"No," she admitted, her voice noticeably smaller. The confession forced a degree of silence from her, the girl looking inwards at why this was. The very concept of putting down who she was made her skin scrawl, even if she put it down to become something better. Maybe she just wasn't ready, came the vulnerable thought. But she felt that wasn't the case.

"If that is what you seek power for, you will forever lose control as you take step after step towards more. When you pursue an impossible goal, you will always need more power." And power always came at a cost.

The restraint Kaalia had instilled with her still lingered unconsciously in her responses. She didn't understand it, she just felt a degree of frustration that world could not reach.


She frowned and pulled her nails out of her own skin. "I want another way. I want to use it, not be.... dissolved by it." But that seemed impossible, fine. She turned, a frustrated edge to her steps as she walked back around the space.

"Something else then. More muscles or-- more control--" She turned on Vesta, a pressing question jumping to. "How did you have so much power in you?"

The woman seemed perfectly fine for it. As if appearances meant anything with Shiido.

 

[Vesta]

There it was.

The hesitation she expected, though not quite the one she wanted. Perhaps she had overexplained? Shaking her head, she decided it didn't matter - it wasn't in her interests to develop a method for the girl to shift her form as freely as a Shi'ido, at least not in a manner that the girl could on her own, although the rationale behind her decision not to learn was a troubling one. "I didn't think so." She said, turning away with a frown. "That's why I said you ought to rediscover who you are, girl."

"You're little more than a coward now." She noted, turning back towards her.

She listened as Darth Daiara vented her frustrations, somewhat amused that the Sith's openness had been misconstrued as friendliness or perhaps benevolence, neither trait which she cared much to dissuade. "I could design a tool that could give you what you want, but it would be through me that you achieve what you want - not through your own strength. Without it you would be incapable of doing what you might with it, though I suppose your stubborn grip on a past that has kept you soft would be safe." She offered, knowing it was likely a much more enticing choice for the girl - though it would also prevent her from growing in that space on her own, as much a crutch as a lightsaber could be.

The girl's continuing train of thought seemed to derail, perhaps abandoning what she'd been after in hopes of another path towards whatever strength it was she envisioned in her mind, and her question was an odd one - did she believe there was a limit to the force? Her head tilted to the side at that, curiously like an animal might, and at first she seemed not to understand what she was being asked, until realization washed across her face. "..Who was your master? You said they were dead, but I cannot believe a Sith might have told their apprentice that there was danger in striving for greater heights." The Shi'ido asked, her demeanor shifting like a beast looking for its prey. Her shoulders rolled back, tight, rigid, and her arms dropped from her chest to her sides as she walked towards the girl with an expression that didn't even attempt to hide her sudden interest.

"I was curious as to why you have been so afraid of your ambitions, but I think I am starting to understand."

Darkness, tangible, palpable, rolled off of her in waves - literal waves - and the light, red though it had been, was snuffed out as shadows took their place. There were whispers, small words of despair, of fear, of hopelessness, that seemed to materialize from the very air they breathed, air polluted by a black smog that spread like a miasma and filled the room like smoke until they were obscured from the other. "Domination, girl, domination of the force. Subjugating its will for our own is what makes us Sith, we do not fear it, we control it. Shape it. Make it our own." She explained, emerging from the darkness to stare down her apprentice with a glare that was certainly not meant for her.

"Your master whispered into your ears what monsters girls like me were, didn't she?" She asked, her words eerily soft, delicate, and yet hungry - her eyes narrowing with hate. "It is in our nature to find our limits and to transcend them, if you are bound by them you are nothing more than a Jedi dabbling in powers you will never understand." Her hand reached up, for the girl's shoulder, and the darkness receded as she placed it on her - all of it, the darkness and the words that had came with it, gone. "The price of power is knowledge, knowledge that others are afraid of what we can become, knowledge that they tell us only lies when they caution us of what lies beyond their limits - limits they devise to keep us from ever growing further than them."

"I want you to surpass me, girl, but you can only do that if you discard that past and embrace your future." There seemed to be the start of a smile there, or maybe a grin, as she pulled her hand away and stepped back. "My strength comes from within, from the maelstrom of emotions that fight for control each and every day - but I am not some simple beast, am I? No, I'm much more than that, because I alone am in control. Not my hatred, not my anger, and certainly not my fear." She explained as she stepped into the center of the room again, her hands gesturing towards the walls lined with the black crystals she had mentioned before. "Like these lignan crystals I am empowered by the dark side, I feed on the hatred I feel, on the hatred of others - on their anger, their rage, their pain and their grief, too. I feed on their lives, on their very essence, and their deaths as they pass, and I am all the greater for it."

"Consider your hunger, girl. Feel it, that desire to pull from me what I've already given you - that addiction that drives you even now." She turned, a raised hand closing into a fist as she visualized crushing something in it - purely as a means of theatrics. "Now imagine you bore that from birth, that it was what made you who you are, what you are, and the only way to survive was to control it - that is how I possess what I do, how I remain who I am." Vesta revealed with a grim smile, both great pride and regret streaked throughout. "Is that what you want? Power?"

"That is something I can teach."

 

[Darth Daiara]

It all made sense. In a way that made the hairs on her arms prickle and rise. Was it really so impossible that Kaalia had tried to hold her back? Kaalia, who wouldn't even give her her proper trial into knighthood. Not because she couldn't , but because of a choice.

A choice done for herself.

A choice that stripped Aradia of their promise.

Nothing will change. And yet everything had.

That confliction would be visible, two realities crashing to one painful realization. She had been fighting for Kaalia's approval for so long, she had never questioned... She didn't know what was what anymore. That frightened her. Anger lashed at her chest, hiding the poignant bite of loss. Kaalia's affection might have all been a lie. A tool. The thoughts spiraled, and it was only the hand on her shoulder that stopped them in their tracks.

She met the woman's gaze, a lifetime of mistreatment boiling into fury that lit up her eyes.

"That sounds like the place to start. I want to learn that."