Private Rot

[Veyla Tass]

LIBRARY
SITH ACADEMY
CORUSCANT
90X ABY​

One could fault Veyla Tass for a great many things. Neediness. Pointless aggression. Cowardice. Self-loathing.

But she was a learner, at least.

In the middle of her psyche shattering, she found the time to absorb new information, even if only to distract herself.

The sheer size and openness of the archives on Coruscant did exactly nothing to help to soothe her, but she made do by making herself smaller. She sat alone in a small alcove, with knees pressed up against her chest and a text balanced precariously on her legs.

A small, rectangular pane of grey-green glass, no wider than three fingers splayed out, sat on the pages of one of the rare leather-and-paper tomes the Academy had on offer. In between its text, it was littered with illustrations, mannequin-like figures hacking away at each other with blades of flame, or assailing one another with bolts of lightning and bursts of telekinetic wind. Slowly, the young Acolyte slid the pane of glass across the pages, and a cold, robotic voice fed the words to her in a more accessible form.

Unfortunately, half of them didn't make any damned sense.

Like reading a technical manual for a rig she'd never piloted before. Concepts Veyla couldn't grasp. Terminology she was expected to be familiar with. Concepts she felt like she should have been taught somewhere, between the boot camp and the terentatek hunting and gunning down fuzzy, cute little bastards and -

And suddenly a dull, aching weariness overcame her.

Numbly, she lifted her hand away from the auto-reader and rolled up the sleeve of her robe. Her wrist was sickly pink and raw, indented with fang-marks and sticky with dried blood, and as she lifted it to her mouth and sank her teeth in again, she entertained a thought.

Maybe she was just bad at this.

Too soft to cut it as a Sith.

Too rotten to ever do anything else.

For a long moment, she sat on this thought, sharp canines digging into her flesh in a useless attempt at self-soothing.

The smart thing to do would be to find a nice, quiet patch of space with a good view of the Firefist galaxy. Somewhere away from all the trading lanes. She'd appreciate the view for a while, then shut off her ship's life support systems and just...sleep, forever, alone.

Veyla Tass rested her head on the smooth stone wall she'd perched against, and the book she'd been browsing slipped from her knees and to the ground. In the back of her skull, self-preservation tried its best to stoke any other passion. Fury, outrage, desire; anything would be better than wallowing in this self-hatred.

Thoughtlessly, the young acolyte rose to her feet and began to wander.

Maybe she could find someone to talk to. Or punch in the face.

Either was worth a shot at this point.

Anet Raine​

 

[Anet Raine]

Veyla Tass
Robes | Mask | Lightsaber​

Knight Raine.

Oh... Now that had a ring to it.

Pride brought a warm, pleasant feeling in her gut, comparable to how she felt melting in Kirie's company.

Wandering the halls of the Academy felt different, too. She was finally free from the toils of acolyte life. She didn't have to heed any instruction or grovel at the feet of Sith Lords if asked. And if she wanted, Anet could pluck any of these fledglings between two fingers and make them hers.

She entered the archives, walking down the great hall lined with row after row of tomes, holocrons, and digital archives. She wore her beautiful robes, absent the cloak, and held her mask close to her heart, stuffed beneath the folds of cloth that covered her chest. A scuffed and damaged lightsaber dangled from her hip.

Anet passed an acolyte on her way; icy eyes drifted down to the splotches of red dotting the floor. She stopped with the squeak of her heel against the marbled floor. Her eyes locked onto the woman and the dark stains on her sleeve.

"You," she called sternly, then spoke sweetly. "Can you come here?"

Anet waited with a hand on her hip.

 

[Veyla Tass]

"You," she called sternly, then spoke sweetly. "Can you come here?"

Wordless and dead-eyed, Veyla looked up from her meandering. The woman who’d called for her attention looked like the sort of person who thought herself very important, which made her exceptionally commonplace among the Sith. But the Acolyte paid little attention to this woman’s bearing or her dress. She was, instead, enchanted first by the smog, and how it coiled around this pretentious-looking Sith.

The woman’s eye sockets became pools of shadow, while inky darkness tied itself like a noose around her neck, traced slicing-lines across her most major arteries. And…an injury to her midsection. Healed, faint, but repeated, maybe? Vey’s sense wasn’t so precise that she could tell what had happened.

But it was a unique vulnerability, and at least for a second that piqued something in the young Sith.

For the fraction of time she spent observing the woman, something glimmered in the Acolyte’s eyes, and in that brief span she was more than a suicidal mass of loathing: Hunter. Predator. Killer.

Bone deep hunger, like an akk hound, like a tuk'ata, shone in her eyes.

And then just as quickly it was gone, and there was only the dull redness of her gaze staring back at the Pantoran.

“...Yeah?”

She moved quickly and spoke softly, and cradled her bloodied arm lightly in the other as she approached the knight.

Anet Raine​

 

[Anet Raine]

Veyla Tass
Robes | Mask | Lightsaber​

Anet wasn't so ignorant as to not notice anything in the brief but intense shift of the acolyte's demeanor. Of course, without her mask (and thus the Force), she could only rely on her more ordinary senses.

Still - she wore a quiet grin.

"Your arm," she titled her head and briefly glanced down at the blood soaked sleeve.

Then she looked back at the red droplets staining the floor, before her eyes settled back on the woman.

"It's bleeding all over the floor."

There was no accusation in her tone.

She held out her hand, the open palm and curled fingers practically demanded her arm be placed there.