Dream A Little Dream of Me

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]


Selka bared her teeth in a smile, eyes never leaving Spencer's.

"...and that cost can seem staggering to the weak. But here I am." Her sharp-edged smile twisted into a wry grin, head tilted sinuously. "I'm her and I am me, and I'm Je'gan Olra'en as well, all bound up in one. None of their power, only a sampling of their collective millennium of memories. But a shard of Velok is more than enough."

One delicate brown hand gestured at the holocron bag. "Can you build it, Spencer?"

 

[Allyson Locke]

Happiness? Was that what she was feeling right now? Most of her mentors were gone, becoming one with the Force or lost to the depths of Chaos. Though Velok was one that seemed to linger, for some reason or another. Spencer assumed it was because his game wasn't over, he wasn't done. Typical puppet master. Looking down at the bag Selka's hand pointed to she nodded. A part of her was almost insulted that he would question her.

"Of course I can. I know what it possesses, I know the horrors the Dread Lords placed in it. I was taught to Force Walk and the open the gates of Chaos by the Chaos Lord himself Moridin. I was molded by some of the best Sith Lords. Of course I can do this."

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

"Sorry," said Velok/Selka with a sidelong grin of mingled slyness and embarrassment -- an expression that had looked very different when fur and tusks had been involved. "To doubt you, I mean. Low on memories. I know who you are, I know what you can do, but it's not the sort of memory that fills you, it's the sort of memory that you have to think about. The process was...rushed. Imperfect.

"I didn't bring Merrill here in case you proved unequal to the task, by the way. The shielding-slash-trap is her area of expertise. You know one use for this. There is another. When she's done the concentric sphere, a simple and temporary gap will give your machine directionality, should the trap not work. Should the connection falter, or the target prove more than equal to the task, or other measures be found more effective. Like a nice drain right through the etherline bond."

 

[Allyson Locke]

As Velok/Selka spoke of Merrill, Spencer glanced over at the woman who was working with the leather. Nodding, she smiled forgiving the woman in front of her. The target was spoken of and Spencer thought long and hard who would need this much work. Only one thought came to mind and Spencer nodded. "I think I know of who you're speaking of." That was all that needed to be said, Chaos knew the entity was everywhere. "That shouldn't be difficult to include, so many use that power - but if I can bind a powerful user to it. I won't question its ability"

Going through her mind she held up her hand and lifted her fingers as she listed off names, "Kun, Kreia, Malak, Krayt, Bane...just to name a few."

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

"But here's the thing, something Moridin never taught you, maybe never understood. Chaos is nice and all, and individuals can be bound to objects, locations -- but how much of that is them, and how much is a shadow, an echo? Like me, ultimately. You can use something like what you describe, something of the past, to empower a project, but these people are gone, back into the Force, and the project will fade with them. You know I once saw a Jedi Master walk through the soul of Darth Bane without ill effect? Belief kept him safe; knowledge that Bane no longer existed, at least not as such.

"No, this device must be powered by the moment, by the living Force and by the cosmic Force, not by the impressions we leave behind. It must be fresh, new, reinvent itself. It must be a weapon of the present, not of the past.

"What form will it take? What materials?"

 

[Allyson Locke]

"The device is built with the ability to invoke terror to even the strongest of minds. I really don't know how I pulled myself out of it, its complex and searched for what I feared the most. I can recreate that, but if what you say about belief that's its downfall. I need to improve the device." Pondering she remembered something. "Do you remember anything of your time with the Aiing-Tii? If you do, do you remember them mentioning anything of the 'Mind-Walkers'?"

Deciding to give some more information to hopefully jog something in Velok's mind she continued to speak, "They can separate their mind and their physical being entering something called 'beyond shadows'. I believe we can create that same concept but pull who ever is being affected by this device into it...forcing their mind and body to become separated." As her mind worked, trying to go through several years of knowledge she had done her best to absorb, she continued to try and work something out.

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]


"Belief would only be a serious problem if it depended on the vestiges of souls. As for the Aing-Tii..." Again the grin. "Would you believe I couldn't learn what they had to teach? I tried, but I only acquired flow-walking from the other Sojourn crewers after we'd moved on to Zeison Sha territory. But we talked, the Monks and I.

"If you want to go Beyond Shadows, or drive someone into that, there's nothing simpler, not with the armature Merrill is constructing. Think of the staged arithmetic progression of the process of astral projection, think of the layers of the casing she's building -- each layer would need to lull the targets into deeper lassitude, drift them farther away from their bodies step by step. Very nice. Fascinating. Fascinating." Her eyes went glassy for a moment; she knew that, couldn't help it. Integration remained partial. "Staged inclusion of existing mind mazes, mazes within mazes, each marking a Mind Walking stage and leading into the next. Find the escape, wind up deeper in the leathermaze."

 

[Allyson Locke]

"And at the end of it if they ever get that far, the device sitting and waiting. We could tinker it to be more of a mind prison than what its intent was in the first place?" Spencer remembered some of the old works of the infinite empire. There had to be a way to recreate it within the device. "Could also have something to draw the prey in...some sort of bait, but what would be the perfect bait for a being like herself?" Continuing to think on it, Spencer knew exactly what would tempt the other into the maze.

"The possibility of my own mind - it might be tantalizing enough, maybe. I've been given a nickname the last time we met - The Chosen One, its annoying." [member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

"I've pondered the question of bait, and I'm not sure -- well, let me spell out a bit more clearly what I'm planning.

"The armature she's constructing over there, the leather framework, the concentric spheres, has two functions, one with your contribution inside, one without. Think of this project as the creation of a weapon, or a sniper scope. The device is the bullet, but the weapon can fit other bullets -- Force Drain, for example, or even Force Light if you wanted one shot that would destroy the entire armature in the process. The trap is two-staged. It's designed to ensnare a primary target inexorably, isolate the link between them, and send the bullet out at the secondary target. The bait only has to appeal to the primary target, but we don't know enough about the primary target. Not yet. It'd be guesswork."

 

[Velok the Younger]

For outer spheres, carved and subdivided rib bones formed the interstitial braces, the things that kept layer from layer, kept the armature from collapse, and formed the maze. For inner spheres, the ones that came first, diameter the size of the device and a little larger -- for those, the interstitial subdividers were made of smaller bones, claws, tusks, all carved to fit their associated radii. Modern alchemist as she was, Rave had modelled this whole thing holographically, designed each level's three-dimensional maze by computer before carving tusk and bone to fit.

At Selka's direction, she pulled out her case of existing mental mazes, little durasteel spheres. Shards of crystal would link exits and entrances -- escape one, be drawn into the next, deeper in the much larger leather maze.

A sextet of Silk's Levantine Lightbringer sensor nodes had pre-defined places, equidistant or close enough, and all were linked to an external processor that provided telemetry, not just on contacts but on currents, links, bonds. With this kind of resolution, much more was possible.

 

[Velok the Younger]

The innermost sphere was braced by, stretched over, a carefully rounded terentatek skull. Stitched up with terentatek-hide cord. Then a layer of bone, tusk, claw to make the maze. Glue made of terentatek horn. Then the next layer, the next leather sphere, was stretched over and sewn tight. Repeat ad infinitum.

The whole thing, the whole armature, was terentatek to the hilt, its alchemy very, very specific. She'd made her name and fortune using alchemy to enhance and preserve a terentatek's Force-barrier properties for leatherwork purposes. Now it was a matter of making that at least partially one-way.

And partial was the word. One had to be drawn in easily enough, and kept in. Likewise, one had to feel little or nothing of what the concentric sphere armature held, not until one was inside and feeling its emanations reverberating over and over and over. A resonance chamber for soul torture.

 

[Velok the Younger]

She'd had to arrange for a specially constructed repulsor platform just to carry this thing; due to Force resistance and ensuing telekinetic difficulties, the repulsor platform already lay under the three intersecting poles that formed the base armature. The leather armature took form around their point of intersection -- layer of maze, layer of hide, layer of maze, layer of hide. A mental maze's standard one-way doors had been carved of runeworked tusk, terentatek ivory. But unlike a normal mental maze, this one was not designed to release its captive. There was no convenient exception to the one-way doors.

At Selka's suggestion, the existing mental mazes found their place within the larger maze. Mazes within mazes, corresponding to the steps of Mind Walker astral projection. Mental mazes already did something of that kind, separating perception from the body; Rave applied experimental alchemy to them, enhancing that quality. She threw in some Sith magic, the kind that drew on a soul -- the invocation and command and manipulation of spirits were the only aspects of Sith magic she really knew, apart from healing. She threw in some spirit ichor tending towards Nightsister mesmerism. Green weaves of light permeated the mazes, layer by layer. She added a Nightsister control web, a hatchwork of lines, embedded a spherical web in each layer. She worked crystal into the bones like a Force-imbued weapon, which could disrupt the connection between soul and anchor.

Layer upon layer, she built the foundations of hell.

 

[Velok the Younger]

Every single layer got that treatment, or a variation upon it. Nightsister control webs were normally cast over a large area by leaping or flying witches. The webs suppressed powerful Force users, suppressed the will of semi-sentient rancors, exerted dominance on the mind and spirit. To make a control web permanent was an innovation in and of itself, tightly linked to how Nightsister shamans could bind spirit ichor into matter or matter-like forms, permanently distorting a body until death or even conjuring weapons or tools. The terentatek hide and bone and claw and ivory swelled and transformed under her application of somatic magic, and liberal amounts of her own blood. Alive as it had been, it responded easily to her expert touch -- she knew terentateks like nobody else. But dead as it was, as dead as steel or stone that Nightsister crafting could change permanently, death could not interrupt it. The web of crackling green took form, settled into the lines of the maze, made them glow right through the next layer of leather overtop of it all. They flared and then died down, invisible flame like hot air over coals, until the entire armature made her eyes water to look at it too closely.

 

[Velok the Younger]

As each layer's maze took eye-searing form, she pondered the shapes she'd wrought, first on holo and then in ivory and bone. The mazes' convoluted paths formed runes in Sith and Dathomiri traditions, runes of confinement, runes of entrapment. Incantations drawn from Sira Ves, her clone donor, the woman who had inhabited her body when Rave was a child. Incantations Rave had invented.

And lines from the Taurannik Codex. Not just any lines, either. Summoning, entrapment, conjuration at its highest apex, a spell sufficient to call Lotek'k itself. She had used the Codex in her creations since then, most notably in the armor worn by Seydon of Arda; she had translated it, assembled it, worked it into half a dozen projects, some more successful than others. This was a new application, but a pure application, at least pure in intent. Ancient Muspilli runes from the Knell itself wove into Sith and Dathomiri runework like components from different manufacturers, spliced together by an expert hand.

 

[Velok the Younger]

And here, in the place where the Taurannik Codex had been used to its full potential, for the first time in a hundred thousand years -- in the place where Lotek'k itself had been dragged down and slaughtered -- Rave found the Codex runes more apt to her touch.

Godsblood Spire, she said to herself. That's what I'll call this place. One down...how many more to go?

Glee clenched her hands into claws, a tight grin spread across her face, and she poured a jar of her blood over the trap. It seeped through the layers that had been laid down, through the one-way doors of terentatek ivory. It found gaps in the shell, and where it touched imperfection, the leather drew tight and sealed itself shut. More layers went on top of that -- mazeshell, leathershell, mazeshell, leathershell, each arranged and marked in the forms of the Codex and later traditions, newer traditions: The Sith, and the Nightsisters.

The orb swelled around the steel armature, and huge brackets of terentatek horn -- entire tusks -- stood waiting to hold it securely.

 

[Velok the Younger]

She took a break from the growth of the mind trap after several layers, after subdividing them and leading paths up and down and throughout -- until she couldn't follow them anymore, not even with reference to the holomodel that was her blueprint. She'd applied AI to this, and high-end pathfinding software, the kind used by outstanding hyperdrives. The break she took was to put the bondfinders together: Lightbringer sensor nodes, two on each axis, worked hand in hand with Tashai bond-tracker talismans. Six points of reference, two means of detection, all feeding into the innermost chamber and outward display options, so one could know if something was trapped, something that had a good link anyway. With the Lightbringers' thaissen crystals and the Tashai talismans' bond-sensing ability, this monstrosity's caretaker could get directionality for the strike.

She couldn't put the talismans right by the Lightbringers, of course. In fact she had to put solid plates of nullification resin between the Lightbringers and the growing leather sphere, to filter out background noise. These machines were sensitive enough to separate contacts, though, especially in synch.

 

[Velok the Younger]

The finished product was spherical, with a diameter of three meters, a tight-stitched mass of terentatek hide distorted by the outline of the maze beneath. It was only the first such maze, the outermost.

Nightsister crafting, Nightsister shamanism, Nightsister control web, Nightsister runes. Sith runes, Sith Magic of spirit invocation, Force-imbued bone, Sith alchemy to preserve the leather's Force-resistant properties and strengthen it and make it close to one-way, Sith alchemy involving her own blood to unite the disparate materials. The Taurannik Codex, enhanced by this place, where the Codex had been used and its target defeated. Mind Walker arts. Jedi mental mazes as checkpoints that fed into each other, within a far greater mental maze.

Fourteen kinds of security. Dozens of layers of maze, with smaller mazes hidden within. And then thaissen-crystal Lightbringer sensors shielded from the payload by nullification resin, and backed up by Tashai bond tracking talismans, for targeting the secondary objective.

The spherical apparatus sat in a cradle of terentatek tusks, each carved with Dathomiri and Sith and Muspilli runes. Rave could hardly bear to look at it; her eyes watered, her mind flinched away, she felt as if she was standing on a cliff.

 

[Allyson Locke]

"The guess work is the hard part. The times I've interacted with her, its been cryptic and aloof. There has to be something that drives it, that makes it keep going. There's a hunger about the whole thing...I'm determined to find out what it hungers for." Spencer looked over her shoulder and watched Rave continue to work. The woman was mad, somewhere along her lifetime a screw fell and she became what she was. Still, Spencer knew that the screw that fell out was replaced by a sort of genius. Before she delve too deep into a place where she didn't want to go, Spencer looked back towards Velok/Selka.

"We have all the pieces, but what if it isn't strong enough - are you thinking what I'm thinking...of course I'd have to run it by Ashin..." Spencer thought of one planet and one thing in this galaxy - she wondered if the now humanized former whiphid knew what she was thinking.

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

"I almost remember," she said frankly. "I remember pieces, general ideas. I remember you can be even stronger than you are, in a certain place, on a certain world. I remember that it's a secret you and Ashin have kept very, very silent, and I remember being fascinated, but keeping my distance."

She mulled it over for a long moment, eyes flicking up at Spencer.

"If Ashin will agree, and if you can stand to jeopardize your secret -- am I remembering right that we could be talking about exponential increase to output?"

 

[Allyson Locke]

"I'll have to speak with Ashin, though after being at her side for so long...I can assume her answer already." Spencer bent her fingers as she played with the ring on her finger, times like this made her remember that she had been at Ashin's side for so long. Waving the same hand in front of her, she shook her head. "I have other people to think of when I ponder my actions. I fear this one only because of my daughter and her background. If it means jeopardizing my secret to keep her and Ashin safe in the end its worth it. Though I'll only use it if its completely necessary, which is what I'll express to my wife when the time comes to talk to her."

Digging into her knapsack she pulled out the crude work of one of her first holocrons. Holding it in her hand she opened her palm and let the object float by use of the Force. "I've gotten better at creating the shell of the Holocron, they're not so rustic anymore. This is what we'll use for now, until we decide if my other secret is a dire necessity." [member="Selka Ventus"]