More Than A Weapon, More Than A Life

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden sat back and surveyed the fruits of his work. A massive fleet was assembled at a secret rally point within Protectorate space. Their purpose was equally secret to nearly all within the Protectorate. He would not risk tipping his hand to his enemies before it was time. But that brought him to one last problem, one last hurdle to overcome. He had great strengths as a tactician. His work coordinating the Protectorate fleets had won numerous battles but he knew that he was going to be needed on the ground for this operation, and that left him with one uncomfortable truth.

He needed help.

While his tactical prowess was undeniable, Ayden had a less than stellar history in martial combat. Ashin had thoroughly beaten him over Kayri, and his duel with Ordo over Naboo had been at best a stalemate, and that was with the Mandalorian Sith Lord handicapped rather severely. It was obvious that he had a deficit in power and that was not something that could hold him back in this fight. So he began to research options to overcome this weakness. He started with attempting to pin down what would be needed to effectively accomplish his intended goal.

While he did his research, he sent out a message to [member="Rave Merrill"]. He was familiar with her work, both by reputation and first-hand. He had been there when Lotek'k was slain and still wore the coat made informally in his name. She did truly great works with alchemy and would be the best person to consult.

I find myself with a need for an item, a weapon, that will amplify my power with the Force. As you are the greatest alchemist I know with the most experience in matters such as this, I wanted to ask if you could lend my some manner of knowledge on how to achieve this.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

Lord Protector,

You understand, of course, that all true power comes at a cost, and I'm not talking about credits -- I'll invoice you the standard consultancy fee, nothing extravagant. There aren't many artifacts whose express purpose and function is simply to make you stronger in the Force, without appreciable drawbacks. The Fell Star comes to mind, but it's in Jedi hands from what I'm told. What you're describing could probably be best accomplished with what the ancient Sith called a Talisman of Concentration. Its cost is twofold. First, it requires the ability and opportunity to focus; broken focus can be problematic. Second, after you and the talisman have done your work, there will be exhaustion, weakness, vulnerability.

I may be able to craft you a very powerful Talisman of Concentration, but I can't guarantee that those weaknesses wouldn't grow with the talisman's power. In other words, you would have to be prepared for the possibility of burnout, even unexpected burnout, or chaotic events.

Would that suit your needs?

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

He paused and considered what he read from Rave's message. There was a danger to what was suggested if he understood it correctly. There could be random, uncontrolled outbursts of the Force with no warning. His own connection to the Force could be weakened, stripped away entirely, or utterly severed. Every time he thought he had a grasp of the full scope of danger this plan represented, his mind found a new thing to add to the list.

I am prepared to accept these risks. If possible, I would like to have as much of a hand in this process as allowed without negatively affecting the process. I am prepared to give whatever need be given and risk whatever must be risked.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

That can be arranged. Start preparing now -- I'll employ a similar process to the one I used on my own sword. It took a large volume of my blood. As much as you can remove safely within the next three days, ideally. It seems counterintuitive, but I would also recommend fasting for twelve hours before the forging process begins.

I'll send a ship for you. There's only one location where this can take place, and it's a location I've promised to keep very, very secret. You won't be informed of the location. If that condition is acceptable to you, we can begin.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

Ayden smiled. So some secrets were worth being kept after all. That was reassuring. He sent a brief affirmative reply before he set about arranging for his departure. Thanks to the increase in Exarchs, the number of tasks that fully required his attention and presence had dropped significantly. It made his frequent trips away more readily possible and helped him keep hold of his sanity.

Taking a trip out on a personal transport, Ayden navigated back to the lost nebula that had been his home for centuries. There, amongst the ghosts of wars past, Ayden boarded the decrepit ship that served as his research lab. Walking past the room that had held the man known as Sarge Potteiger in stasis on-and-off for four hundred years, Ayden stepped into the room of his salvation and nightmares. There, amongst the walls, were several dozen men who all looked to be Ayden Cater. Some looked considerably younger, and a few looked a bit older. None of them looked back at him, instead left floating in vats of bacta and other chemicals.

Ayden stepped up to one of the older doppelgangers and pulled out a large needle and several empty blood bags. If it was his blood Rave needed, then she'd get all of the blood she needed.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

The ship that arrived, at a prearranged deep space meeting point near the Protectorate, was the Lethewalker itself. Rave spent the voyage stabilizing her latest modifications; the ship would never be stealthy in the Force, it had carried too many deadly things, but Ayden would get a scent of familiar darkness writ large. Over the course of the battle of Chalcedon, faced with exigent circumstances and only one tractor beam to halt the ballistic tumble of a slave ship, Rave had alchemized not only the tractor beam projector but the requisite structural elements. The ship's bones were growing stronger, more stable, bit by bit. She'd done her best to alchemize large batches of metal before -- the Fett Kal trench knives, the Dauntless combat blades -- but never a starship. Certainly not a frigate.

The Lethewalker exited hyperspace ten million miles from anything, and waited.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

Only a few short minutes after Rave arrived, a YTA-1300 freighter dropped out of hyperspace broadcasting Ayden's arrival. No sense in risking any accidental fire. He waited for confirmation before flying into the waiting ship's hangar and set the ship down. As he came down the ramp, a hoversled came behind him with a small container and a massive crystal that had been strapped down to prevent movement.

If Rave had come down to see Ayden herself, he would have simply shrugged when she would have looked between him and the crystal. "I thought we could use this for the project." If he was in anyway put off by the ship's aura, or if he detected it at all, he gave no indication.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

Eyebrows rose as Rave paced around the massive crystal. "Believe it or not, crystallography isn't one of my specialties. Not to the extent that I can identify this on sight, anyway. What is it?"

Her eyes flicked to the small container on the hoversled. "How much did you get?"

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

Ayden smiled. "If the reports are to be believed, this was one of several massive focusing crystals for a battle station whose primary weapon was a superlaser capable of destroying planets; the Death Star." Even as ravaged as the galaxy had been, with who knows how much history lost to the Four Hundred Years of Darkness, that name, that event, was one of the few things to live on in its infamy.

He followed her eyes over to the container and chuckled in a surprisingly dark tone. "About eight liters. All mine." The average human body only had five liters. The math was pretty obvious, but he said no more of it. "Haven't had anything to eat for the last fourteen hours, so forgive me if I'm slightly terse. How long will it be before we arrive?"

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

Rave scratched her neck, still examining the crystal.

"Alright," she said at last, "we can work with this. Put the next...mmm...seven hours into meditating on this crystal like you would with a lightsabre you just made. Fix the flaws, attune it to yourself as close as you can manage. When you're done, have a meal, get some sleep, and my guess is we'll be well on our way by the time you wake up." She drew a fingertip along a facet, and a thin sheet of crystal flaked away into her hand. "I've got some research to do."

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

Ayden didn't respond. Instead he turned and sat crossed legged in front of the crystal. The exercise she needed him to perform was a simple one; it was one every Padawan learned and participated in during the course of their training. The only difference here was the crystal. Though the crystal itself was much larger than a lightsaber crystal, the fundamentals remained the same. Realign the molecular structure of the crystal, remove any flaws that were present for its creation.

It was a simple enough task that he began intuitively fixing the flaws while his active mind sought to attune the crystal to him, to his personality. More than anything, he knew he needed this crystal, this weapon, to resonate with his will. If he wavered, even for a moment, he would be at risk for utter annihilation. He focused on the things that drove him, the things that had made him forgo the blissful sleep of death for four hundred years. These feelings, shame and guilt, were being slowly replaced by things like a sense of duty and attachment to certain people. He focused on these more positive things to attune with the crystal.

When he opened his eyes, feeling only a short while had passed, Ayden looked at his chronometer and found nearly eight hours had passed. He looked up at the crystal and was fascinated to find that it had reshaped itself into a hexagonal prism that ended in points. It had also changed its apparent color to a soft, transparent blue. That was good enough for him. With a groan Ayden stood up and realized just how sore and hungry he was. "Food first, sleep later..."

 

[Velok the Younger]

While [member="Ayden Cater"] performed his task, Rave retreated to one of the Lethewalker's science/alchemy laboratories. The sheet of crystal became three, then nine, all thinner than paper, each held by a telekinetic grip of clinical exactness. Each crystalline windowpane became a slide or a laminate or an inset for her many machines, some of them alchemical and others wholly technological -- mass spectrometers and the like. Between hours-long analytic sessions, she napped, managed business by hypercomm, and ate. She also continued stabilizing the alchemization of the ship's bones. She made no pretense of holding herself to the same grueling standard as she'd required of Ayden, and would require. This wasn't nearly over.

She also analyzed the blood, just preliminary sampling and categorization. His midichlorian count got the sort of impressed nod that one gave when they saw what they expected to see. But that was a side task for the times when the machines needed to brood over the crystal.

Once Ayden finished eating, resting, and doing what he would, he'd find Rave in the lab, toying with a small tetrahedral holocron of very recent creation. Whatever she'd done to it, it matched the blue tint of the altered crystal.

"We're about half an hour from reversion; it'll be another three hours to make planetfall."

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

Ayden raised an eyebrow at the news and took a moment to pretend and study the curious holocron. "Two and a half hours to make planetfall? Are we taking the stairs?" He could not help but feel slightly flippant with the comment, but he doubted Rave would take it personal. Wit satisfied, Ayden did take a serious look at the holocron. Without actually holding it to examine it, and not wanting to probe it with the Force, he could only really guess at its purpose. It felt safe to assume it was going to be used in the coming ritual though.

"So why this planet? ... Wherever "this planet" is." He stood up and looked at the alchemical genius with a raised eyebrow. "I didn't think these projects needed a particular planet for the work to be done."

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

She didn't clarify the name of the planet, nor the reason for the extensive sublight travel time. Planetfall would take that long due to the planet being deeply immersed in a huge cloud of gas and dust that impeded sensors; the Lethewalker had moderately excellent engines, but the risk of running into the planet or its defenders was non-negligible. That, and the Kelsieri required that she exit hyperspace well outside the cloud. This was Levantine space, but the Levantines didn't know it yet; the Kelsieri Echani owned Kelsier. For that period of time, Ayden would be occupied away from viewports that might reveal the cloud or the distinctive four-star system. She had her reasons, needless to say, for keeping the planet secret. Stygium prospecting was one of them. Even Maramere was only a secondary source to Aeten, a product of an ancient transport crash. Kelsier was, so far as she could determine, a primary source.

"This planet is the current resting place of a very specific alchemical forge -- the Dark Forge of Aza'zoth, the most powerful apparatus of alchemy in the galaxy. I'm its keeper, have been since I was a Knight. I removed it to keep it out of the hands of the One Sith, who'd started using it. Very few people know I have it; even fewer know this location."

She tilted her head, eyes half-lidded as she felt hyperspace resonate in the ship's new alchemical bones.

"We're almost ready for reversion. One minor concern: aesthetics. I've forged more blades than you've handled, I know how to balance and craft and hone, but the general aesthetics of it, and the design best suited to your personal style...you did want this in the form of a sword, correct?...show me in the flame. I find it more accurate than drawing, and let's face it: I don't want you in my mind any more than you want me in yours." She held up a palmful of flame to mold into a shape he preferred.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

It was awkward at first, shaping the flames. Ayden had never delved particularly deep into the teachings of the Shapers of Kro Var. He knew the fundamentals and theories of it, but had never actively practiced it on his own. For a time, he simply experimented with spinning the flames into a shape and gradually grew more complicated. First a rectangular prism, then a half-circle cut out. Then another.

He didn't know how much time had passed, but he was far too busy to care. As in his mind's eye, the flame was being molded into the shape of the sword. It wasn't a simple straight sword, however. The blade curved out ever so slightly and came back in, resembling a very shallow crescent. The crossguard split and curved upward and downward on either side. It wasn't exceptionally elaborate or extravagant, but there was a certain elegance to it's shape, a certain power. Ayden took a step back and grinned before wiping his brow of sweat. Had he been focusing that hard?

"How's that? Sufficiently detailed?"

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

She tapped her temple, right above where the chilab resided, though she might have been referencing short-term memory enhancement or just a normal mortal memory. "I got it all. We should get started. The shape of it, we can handle on the ship; we'll just have to be careful when transporting it after the fact. When we land, the sword will just be a piece of gemstone."

***​

​

As the Lethewalker sailed through the immense cloud of gas and dust that shielded Kelsier from prying eyes, Rave sat with Ayden in the cargo hold. This part of the work was hers, but she kept him as a focal point and a link between herself and the crystal, not just to preserve its attunement to him, but to avoid expending her own reserves. The Dark Forge would demand everything she had, even after so many years as its caretaker.

Sheets of crystal peeled away from the lump as she drove its Force resonance in from its boundaries, in toward the core. She used this process on the small samples of stygium the qo'saarai brought in, but in reverse -- a process she could probably market, if she could ever find the time.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

He sat on the ground with his back to Rave, eyes closed in solemn concentration. It was not a simple thing, to bridge one's Force essence across the void to another person. It was a delicate process; one slip up and he could seriously injury himself or Rave, or do worse. Still, it was an exercise that he was not familiar with and that meant his burgeoning curiosity was kept in check. He had to keep his focus within the confines of the cargo hold in order to keep the link between himself and Rave stable. With Lotek'k, it had been a simple thing. Here, there were more variables at play. Ayden had ambitious plans to be sure, but at times like this he knew well enough to be cautious.

Besides, his curiosity was also sated in that he could feel everything that Rave did to the crystal. It was an interesting thing to watch and feel done. Alchemy was not an area that he had ever held in high priority beyond his initial research into moving from body to body. So to to be this close to alchemic work being done, and by a master of it no less, was a rare opportunity. He simply sat there and observed whiled being Rave's personal Force battery. He'd know when it was time to move.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

This wasn't, strictly speaking, alchemy -- or at least no alchemy that the One Sith or Rave's staff alchemists would have understood. For this, she was trying something new, the fruit of her experiments with aperion -- the aspect of the Force, by Plagueis' cladistics, that controlled electromagnetism, time, gravity. The laws of physics.

Like, say, the forces between the atoms of this crystal.

With infinite precision -- or so close to infinite that only an electron microscope could have spotted the flaws -- she peeled the crystal away, sheet by sheet and facet by facet. She'd grown skilled at this sort of thing, though mostly in reverse, working with the stygium samples.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

To say that Ayden was fascinated would have been like saying stars were hot or the space between galaxies was empty. He observed her every move with rapt attention. There was something about the way she was manipulating the crystalline structure that struck him as almost familiar, like he was watching the faded shadow of some other work. Beyond that, there was something else about her work that intrigued him. Molecular manipulation, at its core, was something Padawans learned when making their own lightsaber. Most would never accomplish more with that knowledge than making more lightsaber crystals for themselves.

Beyond just the scale of her work, there was something in what Rave was doing that struck him oddly. Since a fair bit of his concentration was taken up by keeping his Force channeling even for her to draw upon he couldn't examine her work in as fine a detail as he liked, but he could observe it reasonably well enough to see that her work was, for a lack of a better word, perfect. He wasn't sure if it was just a product of her being a master alchemist or something more. Whatever it was though, it was impressive as hell to watch happen.

His focus was jarred by the ship shuddering. It seemed as though they had landed. Ayden started to stand and groaned when he felt his muscles protest. Apparently he had been more tense than he realized. Sweat was hanging at the collar of his shirt and forehead and his body felt as if he had been running for hours. Looking around, Ayden's eyes were immediately captured by the sword that hung in the air. It looked exactly as he had envisioned, though it was a bit larger than he had imagined. But he didn't say anything. The process was not yet complete, and he knew that. If all it needed was a little shaping he could have done that. Gingerly he took the crystal sword in his hand; after all, for all the details and appearances to the contrary, it was still presently just crystal.

The gangplank of the ship fell back and instantly Ayden shivered from freezing winds. Apparently, wherever they were, it was cold. It was times like this he was glad he so frequently wore a full coat. "After you then." Ayden said a little too cheerfully to Rave while standing at the edge of the cargo bay.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

She smiled at the edge to his voice, and stalked into the snowstorm. A hangar door rose from a snowbank, loomed out of the blizzard, parted with a bone-deep rumble as they approached. Crews paused their work on snowspeeders to nod at the boss. About half of them comprised the galactic standard milieu of species. The other half were eight-foot-tall bipedal tuk'ata in warm clothes, seemingly at home with the rest. Ayden got their attention pretty comprehensively, as if he'd stumbled into a den of sentient, non-hostile, very focused vornskr the size of Wookiees and then some. They greeted Rave and Ayden politely in Ancient Sith or Basic, or sometimes their own unique patois that combined the two.

The snowspeeders, she noted with some pleasure, appeared to be working well for the reconnaissance and prospecting functions she'd asked for. Miniature heatjet/tractor mining rigs, towable by speeder, let her pilots bring in sample cases from the earth deep beneath the snow. With a glance at Ayden, she paused and cracked open one of the sample cases. A handful of earth rose above her palm, splitting into dirt and thin pieces of reddish gemstone. Any man who controlled Maramere would recognize them. With a grin of pride, she brought the shards together in midair and merged them as precisely as she'd crafted the sword. A single thumb-sized stygium crystal wouldn't do much -- Maul's Scimitar had required something like twenty, each as big as a human arm -- but as she flicked it to him through the air, she could admit she'd given worse gifts for better reasons. She made no commentary; the project spoke for itself.

The deeper levels of the base yielded glimpses of operating rooms, medical and alchemical and scientific laboratories, even huge rooms full of slanting brachiative crossbeams where tuk'ata tested out their new opposible thumbs at significant speed and altitude. This project, too, spoke for itself.

She opened a door lined with twenty-four inches of nullification resin, and there sat the Dark Forge of Aza'zoth. Its familiar presence, a wild heat felt more with the mind than the body, washed over her, and she sighed in relaxation.