As the Empress turned and gave Vex her back, she recoiled as if struck, thoroughly chastised and more than a little stung to hear it suggested that all she wanted from coming here was training. She couldn't figure out where she was going wrong. Had it been her own training? A Sith can trust no one but themself. That had been her Master's words. She had believed them, too. All the lessons he forced her to pour over about the ancient Sith had claimed their Order was one that rewarded ambition and treachery. And yet... In Altair, and Varyn, and now even the very Empress herself, Vex saw something different. Something new.
The Sith Order had evolved, perhaps for the first time in thousands of years. It was entirely alien. Cold, brooding spaces, obsidian facades, even a damn castle over a volcanic ridge. Those remained the same. But the people who made it up. The range of emotions and friendships they allowed one another to experience. That seemed to have changed. And, in its wake, Vex was left with a choice. She could be like her Master, rigid, immovable, part of a growing minority of Sith who suggested that the old ways were the only ways.
Or could she could be like the Empress. A powerful woman who walked the balance between old and new.
Vex found the choice easier than she had imagined. She filed away the Empress' words. After all, she wasn't completely rebuked. The Empress gave her access to the archives on Mustafar. Gave her permission to study them and train. That was a small nugget of something, and an opportunity she didn't intend to squander. But she was also not going to leave. There was only one way to prove her sincerity to this woman; and that was to show her there were other reasons she had come to Mustafar that were far less selfish.
She turned back to the table and the cadaver on it and picked her tools and went back to work, peeling back flesh and muscle, cross-referencing her findings with the books the Empress had laid out and her own knowledge of Rakatan physiology. For awhile, they both worked in silence. Until, Vex reached the creature's bones and discovered something... interesting.
"Do you see that?" she blurted out, momentarily forgetting that she had just been admonished. She indicated to a series of runes that had been etched into alien's very skeleton. They were smaller and more numerous than the tatoo the Empress had discovered earlier. Once again, there appeared to be no scar tissue. "More runes. Part of the same curse, do you think?" @Phoenix
The Sith Order had evolved, perhaps for the first time in thousands of years. It was entirely alien. Cold, brooding spaces, obsidian facades, even a damn castle over a volcanic ridge. Those remained the same. But the people who made it up. The range of emotions and friendships they allowed one another to experience. That seemed to have changed. And, in its wake, Vex was left with a choice. She could be like her Master, rigid, immovable, part of a growing minority of Sith who suggested that the old ways were the only ways.
Or could she could be like the Empress. A powerful woman who walked the balance between old and new.
Vex found the choice easier than she had imagined. She filed away the Empress' words. After all, she wasn't completely rebuked. The Empress gave her access to the archives on Mustafar. Gave her permission to study them and train. That was a small nugget of something, and an opportunity she didn't intend to squander. But she was also not going to leave. There was only one way to prove her sincerity to this woman; and that was to show her there were other reasons she had come to Mustafar that were far less selfish.
She turned back to the table and the cadaver on it and picked her tools and went back to work, peeling back flesh and muscle, cross-referencing her findings with the books the Empress had laid out and her own knowledge of Rakatan physiology. For awhile, they both worked in silence. Until, Vex reached the creature's bones and discovered something... interesting.
"Do you see that?" she blurted out, momentarily forgetting that she had just been admonished. She indicated to a series of runes that had been etched into alien's very skeleton. They were smaller and more numerous than the tatoo the Empress had discovered earlier. Once again, there appeared to be no scar tissue. "More runes. Part of the same curse, do you think?" @Phoenix