Laws of the Hourglass: Into the Abyss

[Velok the Younger]

She really should not be here.

The barren soil offered little tangible indications of a pantheon's blessing, nor did its benighted inhabitants suggest exaltation, at least not to her eye. Her vessel remained cloaked, her presence muted by layers of internal and external concealment.

When she had come here last, the future had been her concern, but she had soon discovered that the past was of more utility. On Malachor she had tasted antiquity and more recent locational memory, but only as an extrapolation of what she had learned here.

When the first pheromonal communication warmed her through the sithspawn in her gut, when the first tentacle brushed her cheek, she knew she could not regret coming back, no matter what she was risking.

 

[Velok the Younger]

Her contact had taught her before, keeping her presence and purpose quiet from the local ecclesiarchy. Not all conversions ran deep. Not all colonialism, even the most benevolent, was welcomed with open arms. By solving a puzzle long erased, Rave achieved a private welcome.

Aperion, her weapon of choice if it existed at all, could be more than Plagueis' extrapolation of a midichlorian's trilateral symmetry. Aperion could mean everything, and of all the traditions she had studied, this one cut closest to the heart.

The long-erased puzzle clicked into place. Drift with us, they said; unmoor yourself as you have done before, but this time strip yourself of ritual. Find centeredness, and let yourself go.

 

[Velok the Younger]

In a cave deep below a barren landscape -- not the cave of treasured relics, but large nonetheless -- Rave tasted time and space through unaccustomed relaxation. Not only did her taste for the Dark Side normally preclude that, but the situation was not especially conducive to ease of mind. She got the feeling that her nameless teacher was setting this as a deliberate test, but that feeling could be self-deceptive ego; more likely, this had been part of the technique for centuries. Millennia. No doubt her teacher had learned this way from his, unless there was some deeper way accessible only to the locals.

 

[Velok the Younger]

At a fundamental level, this expedition fell neatly into the category of acquisition: if she wanted something, she was inclined and accustomed to taking it. Knowledge fell into that category, knowledge for its own sake but also for the sake of profit.

She was not a hoarder or a miser, by and large. Credits only had value insoinsofar as they produced two commodities: security and opportunity. Money stabilized her life, gave her the chance to attempt challenges. Things that interested her; things that let her grow. Today was no different.

 

[Velok the Younger]

So where did this technique fit into the puzzle? She certainly had only middling interest in past or future. The technique constituted a lens through which she could perceive how others, including her teachers, perceived and affected the fundamentals of physics. Any apprentice could bend reality with a thought and a gesture,but alchemy had shown her a deeper understanding. She had toyed with the laws of physics at a submicroscopic level. Now, with her heart in her throat, she began to apply alchemy to other laws.

 

[Velok the Younger]

A new presence descended. Dark, very dark, and possibly stronger than her. It didn't feel like the man who'd met her the last time she'd trespassed here, but this place had room for all manner of strong, lazy, selfish, inactive Masters - putative allies though they might be. Resentment boiled in her as she got the heft of the diffuse, presumptive, darker than most, gleeful.

Her teacher gave the pheromonal equivalent of an amused snort. And then she understood.

 

[Velok the Younger]

A small box of Velokite, half of it containing a cube of thaissen-impregnated transpariplast, produced divergent waveforms in a shifting array of colors as her treacher demonstrated his variegated arts. She recorded it all, focusing on the waveforms detected inside the apparatus with each demonstrated technique. Teleportation scared the feth out of her; to distract herself, she focused on promising herself that she would look back on this moment.

Twice.

The presence doubled, and the glee. She made a very satisfied note, and began evaluating herself in time's mirror.

O wad some powr the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us...

 

[Velok the Younger]

Thaissen crystal radiative wavelengths demonstrated conclusively that the Dark Side produced changes at a lower order than the Light. That much was clear. But when a muddied or mixed signature produced a muddied or mixed blur of red and blue, her teacher produced...yellow. Green. Magenta. Cyan. Each had its own interference pattern. Each suggested something different. She recorded each for later correlation with the respective techniques used by her nameless teacher.

 

[Velok the Younger]

Then again, there was no reason to suppose that thaissen crystals had some objective value as a measurement tool. There might be little generalizable value in the observation of higher wavelengths with exposure to the Light Side. On the other hand, the wavelength values of her teacher's techniques seemed to have little relevance to the proximity of technique and state of mind to the Light, so some element was missing. The will of the Force, perhaps, as Skywalker had said, but he had also said that the Force had felt itself under no obligation to speak to Plague is. He had also said, though, at least in the manuscript in her possession, that the Sith, not just the Jedi, could tap into perception of the will of the Force.

 

[Velok the Younger]

If: the Force has a will.

If: the will of the Force has an influence on events and probability

Then: awareness of the will of the Force may improve probability of achieving outcomes which are proportionally compatible with the will of the Force.

Then: there must be an optimal ratio, a maximizing calculus function, relating probability to will-proximity.