Private ...some consider to be unnatural

[Sinestra]

Halls of Reflection,
Massassi Temple

The dense jungle opened into a small clearing, where a towering temple rose from the earth. The temple's stones, weathered by millennia, bore the marks of an ancient race. Their name had long since faded from common memory, gathering dust in crumbling tomes and whispered inforgotten legends.

The clearing was silent, save for the distant calls of whisper birds and the gentle rustling of the wind through the trees. Yavin's orange light filtered through the gaps in the canopy of purple-barked trees, casting dappled patterns on the forest floor and a soft, motley glow on the Massassi temple.

Within its walls, dim light seeped through cracks and crevices, outlining the cross-legged form of Sinestra. Here, where the dark side echoed through the fabric of time, the Dark Jedi found clarity in her visions of the future. As she delved deeper into her trance, a shadowy figure from her visions began to coalesce in the present.

Here and now.

Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Capris was set on ignoring it.

But a straight week of this place cropping up in her dreams –only for her to awake with heart palpitations and some new form of migraine– had started to get a teensy bit agitating. Capris wanted answers, and sleep.

But first answers.

Booting a vine off her leg, the girl grimaced as she drove herself deeper into Yavin's vegetation. Finding her way here had proven disturbingly easy, a simple matter of browsing a few star maps and letting the unyielding bend of the force do the rest. That simplicity had her concerned. Something wanted the ex-padawan here, bad, and based on current patterns Capris couldn't imagine it being for a particularly great reason.

Yet here she was regardless, sniffing around an ancient temple like some padawan learner itching to barrel headfirst into danger and intrigue. This had to be the first time in a year the force had offered her any type of direction. Capris wasn't about to refuse.

Upon arriving at the temple stairs, she could make out what seemed to be a.. green woman meditating a stones toss away. Even from a distance Capris could feel the tendrils of the dark side orbit the woman. She looked serious.

"Uh- hi there."

Capris took a moment to card through her options on how to engage this situation, a hand gingerly moving to her blaster holster justtt in case.

"I'm not interrupting anything am I?"

Sinestra

 

[Sinestra]

The visitor's question reverberated as quiet as a whisper across the ancient temple. Silence hung heavy in the halls of reflection before the seer's shadowy form slowly stood up from her meditative stance.

"Welcome... I have been expecting you." Sinestra finally responded, the haze of her visions still hanging over her sight and mind. Her steps stirred the stagnant air, sending wisps of dust swirling in her wake as she approached the girl.

The Mirialan paused just a few feet away from the visitor. A sliver of light pierced through a crack in the ancient stone, illuminating the sulfuric glint of her appraising eyes. The girl was a bit younger than Sinestra, but the scars etched across her skin aged her.

"You have come for answers, haven't you?" she asked, barely tilting her head to the side. "Come, walk with me then, ..." her voice trailed off, silently asking for a name, as she sauntered past her.

Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Capris met Sinestra's sulfur eyes with suspicion. Running away was still on the table, and from where she stood it didn't seem like an awfully bad option. The way the Mirialan moved, spoke, felt was incredibly inorganic. The twitching remains of Capris's self preservation labeled that a bad indicator.. This was dangerous. Stupid.

Capris moved to follow her the next moment.

"Yes." She replied simply, a flare of alertness clear in the girl at the mention of answers, "Who are you and what is this place?"

Her tawny eyes drifted back to the Mirialan. Sinestra wanted her name, something Capris paused at. Her knee jerk reaction was to lie, but that might have been a risk in itself. She was silent a moment.

"It's Capris."

Sinestra

 

[Sinestra]

...Capris.

"Sinestra." the seer replied after a moment of silence as they slowly strolled through the dusty halls of the temple. There was a chill in the air, foreign to the natural cool of stone, electric.

"This place was built many millennia ago; a place of worship to someone who sought and found answers." Sinestra explained. The full tale of Exar Kun had long been lost, but fragments of it were retained on moldy Sith manuscripts and tomes. "I, like many others before me, have come here to seek answers."

The Dark Jedi stopped, shooting a glance at Capris as a small smile tugged her lips. "And so have you."

Beyond the material plane, a dark current, brimming with power, cracked across their ethereal senses.

Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Capris followed along with healthy caution, absorbing Sinestra's words. A place of worship? Tawny eyes regarded the neglected halls anthropologically, as if trying to find indicators of human meddling.

"I, like many others before me, have come here to seek answers."

She paused at that.

"And what have you found?"

Whatever answer Sinestra could provide was interrupted by a sudden dark energy occupying Capris's senses. Her muscles tensed in unison, but no sign of tangible fear could otherwise be detected. Rather anticipation.

"I assume you felt that as well?"

Sinestra

 

[Sinestra]

"I assume you felt that as well?" Capris asked.

There was a long pause as the smile on Sinestra's lips grew wider. "That is what I have found."

"Power—power over my fate... power only the dark side provides." the dark side's strength had purged her failings as a Jedi. She had cast aside the weak Halsia Myr and embraced its tremendous power as Sinestra.

Turning her head to Capris, she asked with an ever so slightly rhetorical tone. "Isn't that what led you here, too?"

Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Bait. This had to be bait…But Capris knew that already didn't she?

A muscle in her jaw clenched as she looked up at the woman. She couldn't help the feeling that she'd spent so much of her life trying to carve the dark pieces out from her–lathering her ugly past in a paint job of adopted morals and principles–only for it to get her nowhere.

She'd failed. Miserably. She was no Jedi. She'd looked for the very same empowerment Sinestra gloated about in the Order's hallowed halls and left with crushed spirits.

So where exactly did that leave her?

Tawny eyes searched the floor for an answer.

"I came here because I was fed up with the sleep-loss." Capris answered flatly, falling back to her reflex of snark like some deep seated fear response, "Not because I have any interest in getting myself corrupted by the scripture of some dead guy. I already control my fate. I flew my ass all the way over here didn't I?"

It was a defense measure. And also a lie. There was very little about her life that felt in control.

Sinestra

 

[Sinestra]

Sinestra blinked, momentarily taken aback by Capris' reason before she recognized for what it was—a crude lie; her nose wrinkled in slight frustration.

"Do not be a fool," she admonished in a low, sharp voice. "The Force brought you here; the gift you have been bestowed." Her tone softened, returning to neutral as she stepped forward to sit cross-legged on a platform up ahead then motioned for Capris to join her. "There is great potential in you, Capris—I can show you."

But to teach her more, Sinestra would need proof she was worth to learn, worth the power of the dark side.

And there was one challenging bid to prove it—bring the son of the Sword to Sinestra.

Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Sinestra didn't find her amusing. Capris watched the woman a moment, the rational part of her brain screaming to see herself out. To snarl at Sinestra's offer like any good aspiring Jedi.

But why should she?

Sinestra might've been aligned with the dark side, and popular thought might've associated that with pure evil. But again, why should she care? Why should she judge?

She was no Jedi, she was no hero. She had no obligation to hold herself to some impossible standard of purity. She was lost, and clearly the staunch obedience to the rule book hadn't been the answer.

Reluctantly the girl joined the woman on the platform, mirroring her pose as she sunk to the ground. Tawny eyes met Sinestra's own, flat and unreadable. A slight overcompensation for the growing anxiety Capris seemed intent on ignoring.

If Sinestra sensed something in her, Capris didn't want it being weakness.

"Then go ahead." She said simply, "You have my attention."

Sinestra

 

[Sinestra]

"Breathe in, deep breaths, and free your mind." Sinestra instructed, shutting her eyes as she submerged into the endless currents of the Force. The meditative trance would take them away from the constraints and limitations of the physical world. They became weightless; incorporeal forms standing over a fathomless ocean flowing both beneath their feat and around them, a sight incomprehensible to the sentient mind. The galaxy--life, itself--here was stripped to its absolute bare bones.

It both made no sense at all and all the sense in the galaxy simultaneously -- complete ignorance and absolute clarity intertwined into one; life and death; the dawn of creation and the end of times; infinity.

Sinestra narrowed her focus, rowing away the dichotomy of existence: their surroundings shifted to a dark place where the shadows were mirrors, their reflections only carried by a dim light without a visible source. The sight was foreign, but both would know they were in the confines of the Massassi Temple, only the shrine had been pruned to the fundamentals of its creation--an edifice of the dark side.

The electric air they had previously felt in the material world had become a storm; a tempest that could both destroy, but also galvanize. A fountain of unlimited power.

"Stare into the mirror and see." she told Capris. As cryptic as it sounded, it would very soon become clear.

A gaze into the abyss and the abyss would gaze back: promises of dreams fulfilled, of immeasurable strength, of fate in her hands, of all that Capris desired would flow through her in the form of emotions and images. Sinestra probed her companion's mind subtly to see what she saw, but she would only catch glimpses of Capris' desires until the young woman would react to that which she craved most. The seer could not risk probing further for clarity; Capris' mind was strong, fortified by a life of toil and hardships, that much she could tell; delving further only increased the probability of Capris pushing her away.

Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Capris stared into the abyss and the abyss delivered. From the darkness a face materialized, one she recognized. It may have been older, scarred, with a gaze hardened by an untold number of hardships, but it was undeniably him. Caspian.

The girl stilled.

Plasma drilled through his chest in the next moment, taking bone and sinew with it until all that remained was a dark cavity. Caspian's face contorted, a blend of half-shock, half-agony as his body crumbled. Knees to the ground, Capris was left with the image of her brother strangling on a final breath before dissolving into black mist. An involuntary exclamation of horror escaped her. No.

His body fell to reveal his attacker the next moment. Rapid inhales weren't enough to calm her as wide, uncharacteristically afraid eyes searched for any recognition. A gray hood fell back to reveal a familiar set of eyes. One vermilion, one blue.

The boy from Pantora.

Capris stared in disbelief, unable to form a coherent thought. He looked somewhere beyond the girl, lacking the strange warmth and color her memories cast him in. An impassive gaze finally met her own, as if totally removed from the act of brutality he'd just committed.

She wrested her head away, supported by a single hand as she leaned back. "No." The word was feeble and small, but packed with conviction. No, this could not happen. She refused.

Except when she opened her eyes again, it was to an equally disturbing scene. Gone were Caspian and Kyric, replaced instead with a mirror image of herself. Shackled with a head slumped on her knees, eyes lacking.

Back in chains. Back in a box.

She felt her heartbeat in her throat, turning away from the scene with determined avoidance. Sinestra had to be manipulating this, forcing her emotions on the table in some sick attempt to weasel into her mind. That's what she wanted to believe. That this was all some stupid, twisted farse.

But what if it wasn't?

Capris blinked as she was returned to a flat abyss, mind still racing. Had he lied to her too? What possible reason could Kyric have to kill her brother.. She immediately felt a lot more secure in her decision to abandon him, admonishing herself for what little trust she'd placed in the way seeker to begin with. He was not who he said he was.

Not that she'd exactly earned the right to complain...

As soon as Capris got control over her breathing, tawny eyes sought out Sinestra, a snarl on her lips.

"What the hell was that?"

Sinestra

Honorary tag Kyric

 

[Sinestra]

Sinestra caught glimpses of Capris' vision, though enough to piece together the bits into a rough sketch that took even the all-seeing clairvoyant aback. The meditative ritual ceased, returning their ethereal forms back to the cold, moss-ridden walls of the Massassi Temple.

She took a long moment to collect herself, carefully crafting an answer in her mind, while fighting the urge to sneer in wicked satisfaction. Her eyes burned an eager fire and her hands almost trembled in rapture; the son of the Sword had materialized in Capris' vision, indicating she either knew him or knew of him in some shape or form. It truly was destiny that had brought Capris to her--another step forward in her quest of reshaping the galaxy.

Dowsing the flames in her glare, Sinestra finally responded, "A vision of the future." the lie was forged with unbreakable conviction in her voice--in truth, it was only one of many, infinite, possible futures. But she needed to feed the anger rising like magma within Capris, magnified by the strong dark side presence around them. Good. This passion--this fervor--it would give her strength.

Abruptly, the seer stood up. "You must bring the boy--the slayer--in your vision to me, Capris. Alive." she accentuated the last word then turned heel, departing the Halls of Reflection with a casual step. Sinestra was no benevolent sage to impart wisdom at the whims of others, she could not leave such impressions to Capris. No, she must yearn for it, covet it it like a fish washed ashore craves the sea.

Capris Halcyon

dishonorary tag Kyric