Beltor "Bell" Cyrus
"You are trying to draw fear from one who knows the burn of hunger well… I'm no child to be toyed with by chiding bedtime warnings. Does it soothe you, Doctor, to embrace the monster you hide away? Do you feel justified? It is easy for hidden monsters to excuse their darkest desires when they take pleasure in whatever little power they are allowed to hold.
Keep your food… I'll keep my dignity.
At least I know I'm not standing beside the man who took down the planetary shield during the siege of Coruscant, leading to the fall of the Galactic Alliance. Strange company for a man so eager to lecture others about monsters… my conscience is clear."
His smile deepend, and he set the pad down as he got up. His eyes locked on the young man's.
He could read him, more so then he thought. The weight on his shoulders, the scars of traumas long past. "Oh you poor, poor thing. You speak no new truths to me, lad. I know what I am, I have seen it, I have felt it, I have lived it. I have known the spray of blood that coats my hands as I take the life of another in a true, visceral act of primordial violence...and I have over come it. Tell me, what is better, to be born good? Or to over come one's own innate darkness and come out the otherside as a better man?"
He stepped forward, coming to just the other side of the barrier that separated him from the little sithling. He stared deeply at him. Yes, he could see it. The little twinges in his legs, the way his knees kept taut in the small space. He wore the scars of someone who knew captivity well, and did not thrive in it.
"You think you will not break, that you wear armor over what truly, deeply frightens you. I will be the one to tell you,
boy that you hide it no where nearly as well you think. I can see it, and I need not the force to divine it."
He leaned in, towering over Severin as he knelt. "You fear your end is here, that the last chapter of your life is set solely, and wholly in this little box. For ever contained, forever a slave to a master who will never open the door to the cage you have so truly earned your self. You fail to see you are the maker of your own chains, the holder of your own key. You are your own executioner, and you think it is anyone else's fault besides your own. You fail to see said chains are forged in the fires of your devotion to a creed that found you here."
He whispered this time. "
Through victory, my chains are broken..." He said it lightly. "
And through my actions, I am broken." He knew the sith code. Had studied it as a part of his academic journey. He had debated the philosophies of both the light and the dark with those far more well versed in it then him.