[right][h3][sub]Outside the hidden tomb, Korriban[/sub]
Atria K'avel, Sith Acolyte[/h3][/right][hr]The Korriban winds beat at Atria's poncho, forcing it to whip in the winds behind her as her fingers traced over the ancient Sith letters. With the thumb and her finger of her offhand, she pulled her hood further down towards her eyes and tugged her face wrap further up her nose. It was one of the first things she learned about the Korriban wastes that many years ago, in her faint memories as a young neophyte: the sand was coarse and rough, and if you let it, it would get everywhere. Hoods and wraps were the first steps. Recently, she had taken up a pair of goggles and fashioned crude scabbards out of the hides of local fauna for her electroblade and her scrap steel dagger. With both fixed or hanging from a pair of her many belts, alongside her several layers of hoods, robes, and ponchos, she looked much more like a scavenger than an acolyte. For her, that was comfortable, both against the elements and against the perceptions of other aspiring Sith that might wish her harm.

Atria had been listening to the others behind her, assembling and quipping as young Sith do, but she didn't pay them much heed. She had already sized them up as much as she cared to. Long ago, her and the other acolytes made a game of betting on how many times their betters would quip about the acolytes "pissing themselves", but it had long since lost its value. There were only two other acolytes joining the trial today. Another Zakrak, as it were, young enough to be bare in the face. Some part of her wanted to afford the boy some sympathy - to let him succeed in the trial. Her presence was more of a formality, after all - a compromise between conservative overseers and the impatient lords in the Ministry of War, waiting for the next battle meditator to serve them. Normally, through the influence of those lords, she would be spared from the more dangerous trials, but none would allow her to simply go without. On the other hand, mercy made for a poor Sith, and as she had already heard, the young boy had some vested interest in dark alchemy. Mara would surely spare him no detail if he were to fail. It would do him much better than it would her. 

This probably went the same for the other acolyte: the pretty half-breed with her hair loose. The common word suggested that she only joined the academy recently. It was obvious at a glance that she wasn't as incapable as she might have liked, but who knows? The late-joining pretty types either did really well or were "useful" at least once or twice before vanishing in a tomb. She almost hoped that the half-breed made it through her trials, or at least escaped.

She gave the boy a bit of a thoughtful glance, concealed underneath her layers before she looked back to the ancient Sith characters. 

The formality was something of a bore all the same. Instead, as she continued to trace her fingers over the ancient Sith characters, she closed her eyes and [i]commanded[/i] the force to pool at her fingertips. She had visited the tomb long ago when she was scarcely an acolyte and the sheer presence of the tomb in the force had overwhelmed her. Now, it was a comfortable yet sinking feeling, like a safety blanket while 10 feet underwater. She could understand a few handfuls of the characters after her many years of study but she could definitely sense each one. She could feel each one pool: clumping and festering as commanded by the lingering effect of the dark side, clashing with her own festering pools in ways that made her guts churn. 
"How interesting..." she mused as she continued to trace the characters with her fingertips. 

Atria gave a glance back to the others, lingering on the boy, before returning her attention to the ancient characters. Mara would surely summon her when it suited her.