Testing Mettle

[Tribunal Power]

The dusty wind of Korriban breathed over the dead planet like a lover's sigh. But this lover was leaving, and the wind blew no more, the arid wasteland that stretched for miles left undisturbed by the sky's habits as the normally placid atmosphere gave up, just like the planet beneath. The lack of wind made the already hot, dry crags feel even hotter and drier.

But Lavender had a cool feeling in her spine. Although her purple headband was sweatsoaked and her dreadlocks hung straight from the heat as though they had been cooked, Lavender looked more like a pilot in a climate-controlled cockpit than a Sith Crusader standing in a wasteland. But there was a reason for her crooked smile, her slightly tilted head, her gleam of excitement, and it had to do with a very special person en route to her location.

It would be her first acolyte. Finally, she had been given some recognition by her peers. They had always said she wasn't 'fit' for an acolyte. Of course she was fit. She could run a faster mile than half the Crusaders she knew, and she had a six-pack. A six-pack! No flab below the bra, none.

Maybe they meant mentally fit. Admittedly, Lavender hadn't really thought about it. She figured they meant physically, because realistically speaking she was probably among the smallest Sith around, so petite and gaunt. And they couldn't have meant mentally, because she was a damn genius and everyone had to know that. Who else would have thought to put a cat in the cafetorium to keep the mice away? So what if the cute little kitty contaminated a little food, at least there were no mice. She recalled someone saying mice weren't native to Korriban... But then, neither was the cat, and if the kitty could be smuggled in then mice could too, and there's nothing wrong with a little insurance against annoying vermin.

Speaking of annoying vermin, Lavender was pulled from her thoughts by a muffled cry some distance behind her. She closed her eyes to keep from losing her temper, and called behind her, "I told you to shut it!"

The muffled noise stopped, and Lavender let out an agitated sigh as she cast her eyes to the southern sky. The acolyte was given very clear instructions to take a shuttle from the temple to her exact coordinates, so that they could meet and greet...

 

[Korps]

Varrick guided the shuttle down to the red dust of Korriban, his eyes locked on the somewhat distant figure who awaited him. He knew very little of this Lavender, but when her name was spoken it was always in respect, and that boded well. From what he had managed to overhear from the more senior apprentices, Lavender was something to be respected with a lightsaber. As he powered down the engines he wondered how well he would prove at such a martial art; it was unfortunate that he had never undergone any real combat training thus far.

Leaving the small shuttle behind him, Varrick made his way through the windy wasteland to the Sith who awaited him. He was still unsure as to just how one went about addressing or relating to a Sith instructor, so he chose to err on the side of caution, and followed the proscriptions of the ancient texts.

As he reached the Sith he knelt and bowed his head in respect, but was wary enough to keep his eyes up, "My master..."

 

[Tribunal Power]

Watching as the shuttle lowered to the ground not far from where she stood, Lavender smiled slightly to see the landing gear press into the dust. When the acolye stepped down the ramp and approached, she watched in silence, a subtle breeze of dry wind tugging at the dreads that hung from her head. Her wind-licked robes pulled against her until the breeze died away, and the dust cleared from vision. The young Sith stood before her and bowed his head, adressing her appropriately.

He was respectful. That was a positive thing, and spoke to his character. Lavender gave him a smile, brighter than one would expect from a Sith, and nodded to him. Her smooth and soft voice might not have been what he expected to hear. "Beginning with a respectful title," she observed. "You're shrewd. Caution is always wise.

"I am Crusader Melrava, as I'm sure you know. You may call me Lavender, if you like, and I will call you Drell. I've been asked to take you on, and I will do so happily-- but before I do, I need to know what you're made of."

Lavender took a few steps toward him and glanced over him, inspecting his attire and his composition. She was sizing his up, trying to see what he could do on the outside to see if it reflected what he could do on the inside. "Tell me about yourself. Where do you excel? What have you learned in your studies?"

 

[Korps]

Varrick rose to his feet, somewhat off-put by Lavender's familiarity. None-the-less, he maintained his composure, watching sidelong as the Sith took a measure of him. He was a large man, although he seemed more frame than definition to fill it. His eyes had a sunken quality to them, gained from a great many hours spent in the dark annals of libraries and tombs in the pursuit of dark knowledge; yet still they burned brightly. He was clad in loose black robes, somewhat pretentiously, but he was careful not to affect an air of superiority; merely confidence and determination.

"I am, as yet, untested," he began. "The Force speaks to me, but I know not how to understand what it says. I have delved long and deep in the records of ages past, and what I know of the Sith comes from those great lords of the past."

He fixed her with an intense look. "I have come to cease reading about the Sith, and to become one."

 

[Tribunal Power]

The intensity the acolyte flashed was mirrored in Lavender's eyes. "And become one you will, Drell." Taking a step back, the Sith pulled a stray dread from her face and tucked it away, turning her back to the acolyte for a moment. "Your first test is now, my acolyte," she stated.

Her right hand clenched an invisible object in the air. She lifted it with an upward jerk, and an object erupted from the sands behind her, tucked beyond a dune crevice. If hurled through the air before Lorelei brought her hand down, and the object slapped into the sands. She stepped forward and pulled away the tarp that the object was wrapped in to reveal a man wearing a Galactic Alliance uniform. He was badly beaten, but conscious.

She grabbed him carefully by the wrist and lifted him to his feet. He staggered slightly, opened his eyes with a grimace, and peered at the acolyte with bruised and sullen eyes, but said nothing. "This is Sergeant Mathis Gora of the Alliance. I found him on shore leave on a space station not far from Coruscant. He put up quite a fight-- he is a worthy opponent."

Turning her attention back to he acolyte, she folded her arms and fell quiet for a moment. A dead wind blew sand between the three of them, and for a moment all were still.

"What will you do with him?"

 

[Korps]

Varrick barely glanced at the beaten man, keeping his eyes fixed on his new instructor. Idly he wondered just where he came from, and how long he had been in the Sith's loving care, but he quickly dismissed such thoughts as without point or purpose.

"That depends," he said, finally turning to look at the man. "Who are you, and why should I care?"

 

[Tribunal Power]

The man struggled to speak. "You shouldn't," he said with a sick chuckle, turning to a cough.

"Resilient to the end, I see," Lavender commented.

Glancing at her over his shoulder, the man wore a smile. "What are you gonna do, kill me? Go ahead, lady. I gave up on being afraid to die a long time ago."

Turning her eyes to her acolye, she said in a resigned tone, "There you have it. You have an enemy before you, my acolyte, and he fears neither death nor fight. What do we do with the enemy? We kill them, to protect our friends, to assert our domination, to establish a galaxy with one mind. And if we do not kill the enemy, they kill us... And so they must die." She glanced to the sergeant, then back to her student as she added, "But how, I wonder?"

 

[Korps]

Varrick began to slowly circle the beaten man, his eyes cautiously maintaining their vigil; after all, it was a cornered and beaten animal that was the most dangerous. He looked directly at the man, but spoke to his teacher, "He is an enemy, who offers nothing but stoicism and an honourable death."

His hand shot out, his palm suddenly filled with a small blade that had been concealed within his robes. With one hand he grabbed the man's short hair, jerking back his head, and with the other raked the knife below the jaw. He released the man to his knees, standing impassively over the soldier who bled out slowly upon the red sands of Korriban.

"Yet honour is for the living," he said, once again looking at the Sith, as though unaware of the man dying at his feet. "He offers no fear, resigned to death, and so he offers little with his life. How well he fought is inconsequential, how passionate he believed isn't important. What is important is that he is en enemy of the Sith, and that he failed to defeat us."

He gestured dismissively to the man's final moments. "From him we gain nothing, so he is discarded, quickly, and without hesitation or remorse."

 

[Tribunal Power]

The Sergeant's life spewed into the sands, which clotted unappealingly beneath his split neck. Lavender watched with glistening eyes as he was bled dry, like a hunter would bleed his catch before carving the meat-- an equally appealing idea. Pulling her eyes from the man as he gurgled his last breath, Lavender turned to Drell with a pleased expression.

"Simple. Efficient. Concise, lacking of sadism. You may be a rarity amongst your peers, my acolyte, and I am glad for it." She cast her eyes back to the man now dead and said, "He may have been a good man. It is not our place to judge, only to kill, and to kill without judgement is to kill quickly and efficiently. He died well-- you killed well."

She took a step toward him, placing her slender hand on his shoulder as she stepped around behind him, looking him over again. At this point she may have asked him how he felt, but she could see it in his face, his words... He didn't feel. He killed a man and felt nothing. He was cold, made hard by his exposure to the Sith and their teachings. Such men were the kind of soldiers the Sith lauded, but Lavender hated them. She had scarcely met one who was cold as the Sith preferred, but that thought for himself-- a trait despised by the Sith, but appreciated by Lavender. Which kind of man was her acolyte?

Another test, for another time.

"Tell me about yourself, my acolyte. I wish to know you." Removing her hand from his shoulder as she came to stand before him, she wore a smile on her lips still, one not yet wiped away since the acolyte had first arrived. Lavender bore the look of someone who knew more than they said, and said only as much as was necessary. But more than that, she looked unpredictable and erratic. All of these things were true.