It was a pity that Aria was unfamiliar with Silara - with Vitium. It had been almost a lifetime, now, since she had been able to so methodically play with her prey before she lunged in to put down a foe. What had set her aside from the dregs of the hundreds upon thousands of acolytes in the One Sith during her early years was not just her skill with a lightsaber, and it was most certainly not her natural inclination to learn and the ability to comprehend that knowledge - no, it was because of her cunning, her resourcefulness, and her manipulative nature. If the Jedi had the time and was without distraction - if she was removed from the situation and could see what was going on from an outside perspective, or perhaps from Silara's own - then perhaps Aria would have recognized the way that the Sith lord had led her like a horse to water by challenging her learned perspectives of opposing sides of the force - first by associating with the tried-and-true stereotype, and then slowly showing a side that made sense, that resonated with her, and triggered that self-doubt. It was a mind game, plain and simple, with every word carefully chosen based on a reaction the Jedi had prior in order to make her arrive at a decision which she - Silara - wanted her to arrive at.
Of course she couldn't outright trick the Jedi into becoming a Sith, or even falling to the dark side, right on the spot - that would require more force and application of the force itself than subtle manipulation. Even now, as she became conscious of playing into the Sith Lord's hands by arguing a moot point, or by conceding here, or omitting details there, the only path that she followed was a trail that Silara herself had set for her. It tickled her, in a way, to know that even after becoming a mother for the better part of two decades that she was still just as good - or nearly so - at doing what she had once done best so long ago. And, just like almost every other Jedi-turned-Sith, when it finally came time to question the real difference between Jedi and Sith, Aria responded with an explanation that set the two apart only because of some ignorant double-standard. The two utilized their emotions, a path to the dark side, but the Jedi could do so only because they followed a dogmatic belief that, as Silara had pointed out only moments before, was entirely hypocritical and selfish. They were not servants of good will and good intention, they were servants to whatever their leadership thought or said was "right" at the time. And, like with all dogmatic orders, the Jedi suppressed the training and amount of knowledge that the apprentices and knights were given in order to ensure that they - the masters - remained in their positions of power for as long as possible.
Almost entirely like a Sith might, if not for the fact of the matter being that at the very least the Sith made it obvious that such was the intention rather than lying about it and acting like a demagogue. "Yes, we all start at the bottom and arrive at the top, Jedi, but the difference is how we raise our apprentices." She responded, a cheshire grin apparent on her face whilst she continued to circle her. "The Sith train their apprentices with the same approach that any parent has for their child - that they would someday replace them in this galaxy and be better, more knowledgeable, wise, and powerful than they. Someday I will have an apprentice who will learn everything I have ever learned, who will teach an apprentice everything they have ever learned, and so on and so forth - a cycle that only serves to benefit the future generation and make them more fit for survival." Silara explained, though her point was not yet made.
"With every passing generation, every pair of Master and Apprentice, they grow more powerful, they become more wise and knowledgeable, than the last. This means that even though I might be a master of the Dark Side of the force, my apprentice will be even greater than I so long as they live up to their potential." A brief pause followed as she let that sink in. This was generally where others, in the past, had questioned her point - why it mattered - and tried to rub in how that view was wrong. "Unfortunately, the very approach of the Jedi is to stifle growth - to make sure each generation is less capable than they so that their position might be cemented longer than the last. And, as a consequence, each generation of Jedi grows weaker and weaker - they know less, obtain far less wisdom, and simply fail to live up to their predecessors. In a nutshell, they Jedi way is to weaken the galaxy by suppressing information and refusing proper training to their force adepts. At your age I was already being taught the intricacies of Sith magic, something I doubt you can even grasp because of how restricted your access to knowledge is." She said. A sigh and another pause followed, her expression hinting towards another monologue. Truly it appeared that she - the Sith Lord in this role reversal between Jedi and Sith - pitied the younger Jedi. Another manipulative act, certainly, in order to psychologically push the Jedi further towards her school of thought. Already their conversation had made a complete one-eighty from the subject of their identities, and from the status of the original Jedi Order, to a scrutiny of Aria's actual validity as a true Jedi - and, to further pour salt in that wound, whether being a Jedi was actually good or right.
Had the Jedi never brought up her parents, perhaps the conversation might have ended then and resulted in a quick defeat. But such intimate knowledge of her foe could not be so easily passed up, and it opened up an opportunity to push this Jedi to the breaking point - though she would only pull those strings over a comfortable length of time, as to make Aria believe it was her own decision.
"But to defend such a hypocrisy? To willingly submit yourself to such a perverse treatment, to be bent over the proverbial table and allow them to suppress your rights as a living being? I can only applaud your masters for prodding you along until you believed your own captors had your best interests at heart - that they had anyone's best interest at heart except their own. Bravo to the masterminds of a millennia of deceit, for even such a gifted and astute young spark as yourself might have been played like an instrument and fooled into simply falling in line."
Emphasis on false compassion was always necessary, especially when dealing with such ardent supporters of their beliefs, to slowly sway them over not by coaxing them to the dark side, but to push them so far into the light that the moment they realize any semblance of a fallacy in their order they would retreat to the dark for comfort in disillusionment. A game like no other, the "turning" of Padawans and even Jedi Masters was a favorite past-time to her. And then the difficult part came, to inflict a defeat so devastating that their gap in power was obvious but to ensure that it did not create too traumatizing an experience. Her empty hand, the left, gestured to the Jedi as though she were merely making an emphasis that she was speaking of Aria only to release a torrent of lightning from her fingertips that crackled like thunder. There was no way she would allow the Jedi to leave unscathed, to let her escape without having first a taste of the dark side of the force, and though the lightning was withholding lethal force - simply to cause pain, to put the Jedi down to the ground - it was not without purpose. It was common knowledge among Sith, and perhaps among some upper echelons of Jedi, that in order to perform certain dark arts that they must first experience them first-hand. Such, generally, was the case with Sith lightning, with drain essence, and while someone so staunchly in the light - as this Jedi might believe herself to be - to grant them that experience, that knowledge of exactly how to tap into the force that way, was often times too tempting for them to resist in replicating.
It was stated many times by Jedi: exposure to the dark side in any way was ample temptation to seduce one to fall. Exposure via force lightning, or even continued presence with a Sith lord steeped in the dark side, was no different.
[member="Aria Vale"]
