| [member="Connor Harrison"] | [member="Lyra Naerys"] |
A weapon to be used? That didn't fit the profile of the man that had so often featured in reports on the activities of the Jedi, the one that had spent so many years seeking to remove all traces of the darkness, either with words or with weapons, and often with both. He had crafted himself into a living weapon, yes, this was true, but the illusion that he therefore intended such was an absurdity.
No man chooses to be a weapon wielded by another. If that was what Harrison had become, it was never his intent, merely how things had ended up.
It is not your truth.
And what was it he had said earlier?
I lost so much in the process of letting the Jedi make me a good man. A hero. No man stood by and passively allowed that to happen, and as he understood it, for a long time, this one had revelled in such status, enjoyed the power and prestige, even though the Jedi ultimately had to downplay it.
One cannot be seen to have pride in a Order that ultimately purports to humbly serve others. No, he didn't believe it for a moment - and he suspected that Connor did not, either.
He had taught Lyra the danger of such deceptions: true, such things were a natural part of a Sith's life, but while one might lie to others, you should never lie to yourself.
A lie of such kind is designed to avoid the painful knowledge that is hidden behind it. It is an illusion that conceals an agonising truth, one you do not want to acknowledge or wish the world to see. The Sith believed in brutal honesty with the self: pain was a tool, a lesson, not something to hide from.
The Jedi clearly taught you too well, Master Harrison. And so the lies continue.
Energy gathered around him, surging through him at his silent instruction, suffusing nerve fibres and cells with vibrant force, both jarring and yet pleasurable in equal measure. It gathered in his chest, then raced outwards to his limbs, a silent shiver of anticipation waiting to be realised. As it gathered at his fingertips, he stood, bringing both hands before him, fingers pointed outwards, the energy bathing his hands in a soft blue light until it finally culminated in a burst of white-hot electricity that fired from the tips of his fingers directly towards where the former Jedi now sat.
"In this, you are very much mistaken," the Sith Lord said, spitting out his words with a far angrier tone that he had used so far. The calm, cold grey eyes that had watched the former Jedi had changed, warped into glowing yellow-red irises, permeated with the Dark Side energies that ran through this place. He fired another burst of that brilliant blue-white lightning towards the Jedi, not a lethal dose, but enough to set nerves afire.
"You come to my home uninvited, ask to learn of the Sith, and then lie to us of your ambitions, as if we might underestimate your purpose and imagine you more benign."
He heard a clatter as the chair he had sat at struck the stone floor behind him, pushed back as he had come to his feet. Lyra had witnessed him kill before, so that was hardly something new to her, though he could well imagine the surprise she would have felt at watching him strike out at their visitor. The brilliance of the lightning faded, the shock of the luminosity gradually being something they might adjust to, though the potent smell of ozone remained thick within the air.
"None stand before the Sith and imagine themselves to be less than their potential," he informed the fallen Jedi, a scowl crossing his normally serene features, brows contracting inwards, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes, the lips pressed together, muscles around the jaw tightening with visible anger.
"If we create weapons, they hardly imagine themselves to be so. Our way demands nothing short of excellence in all pursuits, that we strive for nothing less than our very best. One such as yourself does not stop short on aspirations."
Disgusted, the Sith Lord lowered his hands, though quite prepared to follow up with another blast if it was necessary. Sith lessons tended not to be so simple as a spoken word or a dismissive gesture: pain was ever the truth of it. Lyra had learned that, as had Tirdarius decades before. Connor clearly had some work to do on that score, or so he suspected: the Jedi taught suppression of pain rather than recognition of it, and that the former Jedi had felt he might sit there and lie in the presence of the Sith Lord suggested how little he feared and acknowledged consequences.
Something that must now change.
"Lie to yourself if you wish, Connor Harrison," he intoned, the angry notes of his voice fading as they returned to the calmer demeanour he often exhibited by default, the fiery irises dwindling back to his familiar grey.
"But remember that only by acknowledging every darkness within ourselves may we wield that which exists beyond, and only through that may we fight the chaos that threatens all." Half-turning, he gestured towards the chair that had sprawled backwards behind him, and it righted itself and moved so that he might sit once more.
"You have little care to be someone else's pawn, to be sacrificed at their whim. Be honest with yourself on that point, if on no other."
