Mad Sounds

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Dissero"]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Cerita had learned a long time ago that she was able to visualize most things from her memories, it wasn’t always accurate - the mind was a strange, abstract thing and that came back to bite you in the ass when you were trying to disconcern specific details on some esoteric subject or scientific research, but with some notes here and there to refresh her mind?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Worked just flawlessly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]She listened silently to his words, almost inscribing them word for word into her mindset, before following his instructions by placing her hands on each side of the crystal - she tried to visualize the platform her hands made with the crystal slowly resting on the metaphysical plane, which was harder than it sounded.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]The green girl hummed just a little bit to herself, some tune she had heard months ago and still clung to her mind like an infant child every once in a while. It helped her steady herself, focus her energy before she closed her eyes. In front of her mindset she pictured a waking flame, the humming subsided and the flame was all that was left, all that she could focus on. She concentrated on its fiery illumination, feeding it her emotions, her thoughts and other distracting notions.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Soon enough she would be devoid of it all.[/SIZE]

 

[Dissero]

"Three cracked crystals..."

Cerita was a determined and willful student, that much was certain, and truth be told Dissero had expected to lose a few crystals in the process of learning. Perhaps any other Master of dark nature would have found this reason enough to discipline the student but Dissero had not been brought up that way nor had he ever found pain or suffering to be a proper method to honing skills. Practice honed skills. Self discipline and time alone doing so would be the discipline. Not to mention he now had a reason to take her crystal hunting in order to pay him back for the three lost pieces.

"not bad for your first round of cleansing. You'll do better next time."

It wasn't an order or a threat to do better next time, it was a comment spoken with confidence and faith in Cerita. He knew how much she hated the prospect of failure.

"Next we take them to the Forge where we will alchemize them against future damage. This will prevent them from cracking from use and allow them to be recharged countless number of times."

Dissero collected the remaining crystals onto a smaller mobile worktable, "Have you used a forge before?"

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Dissero"]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Cerita huffed, brushing a few strands of hair away from her eyes, a thin layer of transpiration was already being a nuisance and just reminded the girl that no matter how hard she tried… she still wasn’t good enough, not by a long shot. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Three cracked crystals? [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Feth almighty, she would have to do better than this if she was to prove herself worthy of [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px]the [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6666666666667px]legacy.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]Then Dissero did what Di always did, make her feel just a little bit better about herself after a subpar performance - it even got a small smile from her, together with the thought that maybe she would leave his pillows alone for now. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]At least for the meantime, until he managed to hurt her feelings again.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]“Uh…” Certy coughed awkwardly, before flashing him her brightest smile. “I ehh… might have sneaked into the Forge room a couple of times.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6666666666667px]“For ehh… some training.” [/SIZE]

 

[Dissero]

Dissero blinked and then smiled.

"Oh good," he replied as he began to push the table towards the forge chamber doors, lifting a hand to open them with the Force, "let's hope you haven't broken anything in here."

The forge room was always painfully hot while active, and considering Dissero's project load as of late it had been running full steam for some time. At the very least he wasn't using Dragonfire - no, that had been saved for the forging of the Phobis Device, the price of which paid to Faenrovon had been quite steep. The dragon rivaled Cerita on hunger for knowledge, but likely if Cerita was also a massive winged lizard with a penchant for devouring anything that upset her ... Dissero would likely pay her the same amount of heed.

But Cerita was a plant.

A smart, pretty plant, but a plant no less.

"The frames are already finished, so the crystals are the last pieces before we charge the 'crons," Dissero had to holler over the roar of the furnace. Setting the table aside he pulled his shirt off before taking up his pair of forging drexl hide gloves, "suit up if you need to. There's plenty of smocks, gloves and masks there to choose from."

Was it a good idea to put a flammable student in charge of forging the crystals? He'd soon find out.

Dissero fed the furnace and pulled open the flue while Cerita prepped herself. With the oppressive heat blasting through the open forge mouth he picked up the first crystal with a set of long tongs, "We have to do this slowly. Introducing the crystals to the heat too fast will crack them. We can do the alchemy without the forge, but this method is faster and takes better. It also uses less of your own energy but you have to time it right. Look here-"

He stepped to the back wall where various other worktables sat with the frames of the aoelocrons laying in wait amidst racks of various forge supplies and tools as well as half-finished weapons and other miscellaneous projects. Dissero pulled open a drawer and withdrew a leather bound book. Velok might remark how familiar it looked but Cerita had never seen the Grand Spellbook of the Sith. This was not that spellbook, but one created by Dissero containing forging notes, skills, and various alchemy spells. He flipped through to a page with a hand drawn crystal diagram and a list of forging techniques on the opposite page.

"This one here," he pointed to a spell meant to make a crystal everlasting, "memorize the chant before we begin."

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Dissero"]

“Aren’t you going to ask me out for dinner, before undressing in front of me?” the girl would quip with that smirk playing on the lips, just a little bit of mischief running rampant. All of that quickly evaporated when an opportunity to learn something was suddenly on hand, that mischief shifted into immediate focus as she closed her eyes.

The heat of the forge was almost unbearable, and in a normal situation it would have probably been quite… detrimental towards her health - but she had learned a thing or two, that was the main reason why she had been here without Di in the first place.

She had known that one day he would bring her here to train with the forge, and she had prepared herself to be ready for that moment.

Using plant surge she directly manipulating her own skin, hardening it against the heat of the Forge. Di might notice that the color of her skin deepened a little bit, moving from light green to something far darker.

With her being safe now, she opened her eyes and wandered over to the book, taking in the various pages that were being swept aside until the one with the chant came up. She read it it a few times, before looking back to Di.

“Is the pronunciation key in this one?”

It didn’t always matter, but better safe than sorry.

 

[Dissero]

“Pronunciation is always key with the dark arts, Cerita. This is High Sith. So much as a simple slip of a syllable could have disastrous results for the caster,” not to put his student off, but there was no hint of joke in the Master’s tone. Either he’d made the mistakes himself or he’d experienced it with another. The myriad scars and the spreading mark of darkness on the man’s chest often spoke volumes of the price paid for his projects.

The Phobis Device had done quite a number to him, judging by how much the corrupted markings had spread down across his chest, arms and back. They’d even overtaken the black handprint on his sternum placed there by the Dreadlady Sable.

“Practice speaking it aloud then watch me while I forge the first crystal. Oh, and wear this-” he reached to place a forger’s mask over her head before lowering his own over his face.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

And Cerita would reply with a serious nod back, that was the dynamic they had - one of cheesy jests and deadlock seriousness when the situation demanded it. In a lot of ways that was why their relationship worked as well as it did, they somehow knew instinctively when to go from jokesters to… Sith Occultists.

Or something.

She leaned in to give him an easier time to put that hellspawned mask over her face, it was entirely too cumbersome to be worn comfortably, but sometimes convenience needed to bow out in the face of… well that fire for instance.

“Destrava Serta Vindito.” Cerita would mumble to herself, pronouncing each syllable as pronounced as possible, this would happen for some time while Dissero gave her a live representation of how to forge the crystal.

 

[Dissero]

“It’s a chant,” he spoke upon opening the furnace and lifting the crystal within the tongs, “doesn’t matter how loud you speak, clarity is the key factor. Consistency comes next. It begins here, continues into the forge, and follows it out. In essence the enchantment is both a warming up and a cooling down process. The binding of the magic holds the crystal through the changes and solidifies the spell once you’re through.”

Dissero flipped his mask down and began then. It was likely that Cerita would not be able to hear him over the roar of the forge, but his voice came through clear not in the way of sound … but feel. Such were the powers of the ancients - pronunciation might be key, but so was will and intent.

Over and over he spoke the words, crystal held aloft within the tongs from one hand while the other hand lifted towards it, gesturing those unspoken powers to the target. After a short time that could no sooner be known by anyone but the caster he moved forward and slowly inserted the crystal into that hellish belly of the giant metal beast roaring before them. The chant continued and within the flames he turned the crystal slowly, first one direction and then the next. This process took longer, but aside from the terrible heat did not seem too complicated. Slowly the crystal began to change - from its natural light, near pale pink color, to a deep ochre red. The powers of the chant were working…

…

“It’s not just the words, Cerita,” Dissero explained as he closed the forge again, the finished crystal laying within the palm of his hand - for something so unassuming, it certainly radiated a strange sense of ...dark power, though it had yet to even be charged.

“It’s your will, your intent. You must not only know what the words mean, but must exude their meaning through your will as you speak them, imbue those things upon the crystal through the Force. You cannot break concentration or you risk shattering the crystal.”

Dissero handed the tongs to Cerita and moved to stand next to the forge gate, waiting for her to choose her first, “At your ready.”

The forge swung open at his gesture and belched out its hellfire breath at the Apprentice.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

And the Apprentice practically stared down the hellfire back into its little corner of the forge, because if there was one thing that Cerita wasn’t impressed by it was the attitude of a non-sentient entity that thought it was awesome just because of the heat it packed in the general sense of the word.

She nodded to Dissero, he was right of course - as always. In the grand scheme of things Cerita even wondered if the words mattered as much as the simple, unadulterated will that wove behind those words.

Could you simply enhance and increase the potency of your craft, simply by directing your will towards the task without bothering with the words?

The Vinithi Clone considered it a likely assumption, but it was clearly something far away from her current level of expertise. It had to do with things like belief, faith, will and above all the experience to mix all of it into one specific concotation of power and desire. Perhaps in a farther future that Cerita would be able to amaze Dissero with such prowess, but as it stood she simply kept putting her will behind the words spoken.

Making the fire of the hellforge burn brightly and with a certain level of neutral malice that would imbue the crystal she was currently settling into it.

But Cerita was an Apprentice still, a competent person with a lot of years of tutelage beneath the Alchemy Masters of this Galaxy, but she wasn’t even close to their level of strength, focus and will yet - which was shown as her concentration slipped just a little bit, right before her crystal was about to be done and ready.

“Feth.” she cursed as the crystal shattered in pieces, with a scowl she stared at the shards before shrugging.

“Again.” the request would come.

She would keep doing it until she got it right.

 

[Dissero]

Vassek sat high above the fog of its moon by the time the pair resurfaced from the forges. Hours spent in the effort of perfecting this one enchantment - but Cerita managed to finish 6 pristine crystals and with Dissero’s guidance set them into the casings and sealed the final spell upon them.

“We’ll charge them tomorrow,” Dissero said to his Apprentice, “after some rest. Take these,” a gift?

A small leather pouch containing the shards of all her failed attempts.

“We do not learn without making mistakes,” he said calmly, “one day you’ll know how to fix them. Until then, keep them as a reminder. ...as a goal.”

Sitting on the rocky outcroppings within which Grievous’ Castle had been carved, the Alchemist gestured towards the sky above to clear the gathering clouds of fog, allowing the stars and sibling moons to shine through. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, itching at his scalp.

“Now if only I knew what to get my sister as a gift for her wedding.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

“Nice try, smoothster.” Cerita quipped back. “Ya will have to figure that one out on your own.”

She was resting with her back against the underfloor of the outcrops, green eyes staring wide at the scenery that was being displayed before her. The skies of Vassek weren’t a joke when you went back to it, you got a sense of appreciation the longer you stayed on it.

Part of its charm, in her opinion.

She had been working on her own little birthday present for Ella, it would be pretty good in her own eyes - what do you get for a woman who didn’t have any use for the material worlds?

You focused on what she did love, and in her situation it was art. Sculpting and other fringe-areas to that subject.

It wasn’t a secret then that Cerita had been working on a little secret project in her gardens for Di’s sister, it was the last thing she could do to show her gratitude to two people who had practically took her in as their family without even considering any other options.

“My project is going pretty swell.” she would add with a smirk, still looking at the horizon.

 

[Dissero]

“I’m a guy, Cerita,” Dissero blurted, “we don’t just figure these things out on our own.”

What does one get the sister that has everything and desires nothing? Amore had always claimed that his time was all she needed, but Dissero would not be attending her wedding and for very valid reasons.

So he couldn’t just not get her something if the one thing she would ever ask for wasn’t what he could provide. He hadn’t even told her yet that he wouldn’t be in attendance.

Feth, he hadn’t even told Verie yet - and that would go over real well when he tacked on that Verie would not be attending either. The risk was too high.

“Project…” a curious glance given to his Apprentice, “what project?”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

“Heh. You will see.” see, there were two ways one could go along with Ella’s love for art. Some might go and make a sculpture, or something in that sense - which usually was kind of a… risk, because you really needed to know what you were doing when you were trying to accomplish a feat like that.

Or… you could break conventions and create something entirely new.

Well, entirely new was not exactly true, simply because most of the abilities of this material was looked off from other beings that traversed this Galaxy. But few truths really were interesting enough these days to properly express, ya just had to color it up every once in a while for the sake of it.

“Hmm, why don’t you… make something for her?”

Dissero was probably one of the few people that Cerita believed could pull off a good piece of art that would impress and warm up his sister, so if he really put his mind to it?

Could probably create something amazing.

“You could even unravel it at the wedding, she would love that!”

 

[Dissero]

Itching at the scruff on his chin Dissero considered this.

“Aye...I supposed I could do that.”

He’d helped Soliael make trinkets for his sister before. A bracelet with protective and enhancement qualities for Healers. Perhaps he could make something else of the sort - though, admittedly, Amore wasn’t much for jewelry or superfluous things. How in the blue heavens was she going to handle being a Queen?

Well, she’d already been a God. Couldn’t be too hard.

Blue eyes switched back to Cerita at the mention of unveiling the present at the wedding and a deep frown grew within his beard.

“Mmm…” he made a thoughtful sound. Amore probably would like the fanfair if nothing else, but even this public wedding was beyond her own desire. She’d prefer a much more private affair away from the prying eyes of the galaxy’s most scrupulous Sith. But she was marrying one of those scrupulous Sith, so there was little say to be had.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

“Dissero Amadeus Darke.” his Apprentice would suddenly say rather seriously, eschewing the more teasing tone that had been there a couple of moments ago.

“I have seen that frown edge itself into your beard far too many times, to simply file it away as silent contemplation. What is that mind of yours considering right now?”

Ya can’t spend such a long time with each other, training, fighting and generally kidding around without getting a good sense of someone’s character, and it was no different between Cerita and Dissero - everytime he was lost in some kind of quiet deliberation, any time he was thinking outloud to himself… she had been there, quietly and not willing to intrude upon his moments of self-reflection, of course.

But there all the same.

Cerita wondered what Di was pondering right there and then, and how hard she would have to punch him in the throat if he decided to do what she was currently thinking he was contemplating on doing.

Men. Unbelievable creatures, really. No wonder that Rave had been more of a jawasexual in her entire life.

 

[Dissero]

Dissero quietly stroked his beard, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. However, I do know that you currently owe me-” he licked his index finger and counted off on his hand, “one, two, three, four...four new crystals. So, your next assignment is to plot a course for a crystal cave and we’ll leave tomorrow.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

Cerita eyed her Master for a good moment before deciding to shrug it off for that moment. Their time spent together made her more aware of the way Di operated on a more fundamental level - currently he would probably dig his heels in if she decided to poke about a bit.

And on this beautiful moon rise? She wasn't exactly keen to start prying when she could probably find out later with only half the fuzz.

Say one thing about Cerita, say she was pragmatic to a fault.

"Is this gonna turn into a close quarters beat down amidst crystals and caverns?" a pondersome look washed over her.

"Because that could be pretty cool."

 

[Dissero]

It was his turn to do the eyeing.

“I think you hit my nose with that head of yours harder than we both thought.”

His nose felt fine, however. He itched at it - yep, still there.

“I’m turning in,” in Dissero speak this did not translate to ‘I’m going to bed,’ as much as it meant he was off to do Dissero things like raid the kitchen, translate a few scrolls, poke about with some unseemingly dark artifact, or perhaps play the piano. Hell, he might even go take a shower. That was probably a good idea. If he was lucky he could manage food while showering.

It also meant Cerita was now free to move about the castle and do Cerita things like eat plant food, plant plants, plant plant planty plant plants.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

She wrinkled her nose.

"If you go shower again, please remember to save some warm water over for me." Dead stare. "No matter what Sol told you about gardening plants not ALL of them thrive on ice cold water for their hydration."

With that said, Cerita would stay on the ledge for a while longer. The upper echelons of the castle had a distinct increase in oxygen levels which seemed to be doing wonders for her skin.

"Also, I hope you have insurance in that ship of yours if you are planning for me to captain it again for this trip."

She was a scientist, not Wedge fething Antilles.

 

[Dissero]

Despite the charades of playful and even times joyful exchanges, despite the casual banter and light words shared, despite all things that seemed so far removed from the turn of the galactic clockwork, there still remained a quiet darkness that lingered in this place.

[SIZE=13.3333px]Notes tapped out on piano keys[/SIZE][SIZE=13.3333px] [/SIZE]echoed up the long empty halls, drifting through sullen-eyed Kaleesh warrior statues, every turn and every bend filled with a slow tune. Dissero often found solace in music as Cerita had come to learn. He was a gifted man in many ways and it was with music that he found a single gift that could not possibly lead to dark deeds or thoughts.

Perhaps he played to express the things within that he never had words for. Or perhaps as Cerita had maybe ventured on her own he played to remind himself that he was still … human? Not the monster all his inventions and projects made him out to be. Not the beast of the Sith his misdeeds pinned him as. It wasn’t the person he wanted to be but found great difficulty in denying.

I’m not that man.

The same man who had stood as an accessory to the extermination of millions of lives at the side of Velok was the man who dreamt of becoming a father, of marrying Verie Lacroix, of going to his sister’s wedding and sharing in her joy.

Where do we draw the line between our hopes and our hearts? When our dreams pull us one way and our souls drive us another - is it possible to be only two halves and never a whole?

He’d stood before the looking glass for a long time, wiping away the fog, wishing it were so easy to simply slough the corruption from his spirit. Could it never be so easy to shed the skin of the darkness as though shaving beard? As though washing the grime, sweat, blood from the flesh could just as readily cleanse our disease. Tossing aside our tattered robes for pressed silks and linens of a gentleman - fitted to perfection but never truly comfortable.

I’m not that man either.

A black crystal sat atop the piano, emitting a presence of power, of quiet, of a strange simmering solitude. Dissero felt haunted by it but compelled to play the notes for it.

You cannot go home, he thought as he stared at it, your world is ashes and splinters. But you can stand guard over the beauty of my home and watch over my sister. You may never see your own family again, but you will know hers as well as you ever knew yours. You may never know the final peace, Brom Burnside, but you will help keep that on Kuat while my sister rules.

That is your fate.

Velok once told me I would one day watch the galaxy bend to my will, and it starts now.

Can’t make right my wrongs. Can’t change the fates. But I can drive this power to do some good. Somewhere.

The piano kept playing as he lifted himself from the stool, took up the crystal, and stepped off to the lift. Back down to the forges. Back to work.