Luxury 5000 Yacht Rook, Maw Cluster; 44 ABY
The Rook emerged from hyperspace in a flicker of pseudo-motion, poised past the edge of the Kessel system. Before them, the incandescent swirls of altered light gave the only real indication of the locations of the centers of each black hole. Having piloted into the Maw more than once, Ben took the helm as Vestara took the copilot's chair. A thought struck him as they entered the Maw. "Whatever happened to Ship?"
Vestara, who'd been watching the passive scans be distorted by the super gravity fields, looked thoughtful. "I'm not really sure. Last I saw was when Abeloth used him to bring us here." She shrugged, "I suppose he left when we killed her, probably returned to Kesh."
"Do you think you'll ever see it again?" Ben asked.
"Ship?"
"Kesh," Ben tore his eyes away from the expanse before them. "I'd like to see it one day, where you grew up."
"I'm not sure if I should ever go back," Vestara said in a low tone, "I've done so many things against the Tribe."
"But you would like to pay respects to your mother." Ben brought his attention back as the yoke started to strain against the pull on either side of the safe passage, he did remember what her father had told her on Dromund Kaas.
"Maybe when this is all over," her tone was pretty clear he should drop it.
Truth be told, Ben wasn't entirely sure what he'd do if she told him where her homeworld was. He knew the Order was undoubtedly searching for it even now, but Ben really wasn't part of the Jedi any longer, was he? He'd seen himself apart from the Order in the Pool, an arbiter of alignment instead of a Jedi Knight. Yet, he didn't think he could turn his back on his father and family. But, Vestara would be a part of his family now, she was essentially his fiancé. The word rolled in his mind. The change hadn't happened in a flowery display of affection, he knew she wasn't that kind of person, but it did resound deeply in both of them.
Vestara found herself conflicted, it seemed she couldn't get one day to just feel good about her situation. How much of her old life would she share with Ben? Their future was to be together, but she knew how much the Jedi wanted the location of Kesh. If they ever found out, it would mean the end of her people. Ben was still very much a Jedi in spirit, and Vestara couldn't be sure he'd keep her secrets when they affected the Jedi thusly. Besides, wasn't she supposed to side with the Sith?
The idea of balance was one she hadn't quite figured out. She was supposed to embody the Dark Side, but what did that entail? Was she to travel to Kesh and rouse those left behind to create a new Sith order? Then again, nothing they had seen indicated they'd take a direct hand in either the Sith or Jedi. They just needed to stop another Abeloth from being created after they finished with the current one. She could do that, she had little love left for her Tribe now, but Ben's ties to the Jedi were strong He wouldn't just sit by while Sith attacked his family, her family, too, she realized. Ironic, her father had wanted her to seduce him over to the Sith, but she found herself more closely tied to the Jedi than ever. She suppressed a grimace, Master Skywalker probably wouldn't be too happy about his son marrying a Sith.
Both of them were brought out of their reflections when Abeloth's planet came into view. It sat like a lonely green pebble aloft in space and time. They took the yacht in to the same beach that had become their common landing spot, as close as could pass for 'familiar ground' on the mysterious planet. They secured the ship, more out of habit than a fear of someone stealing it, and found themselves on the sandy ground.
Things had changed since they'd last been here. Abeloth's plants had been dying when they'd gone to the Pool, but now they were completely gone. What was left were the benign trees that towered over the smooth land, casting shadows that small furry creatures darted through. It looked, for lack of a better word, healthy with Abeloth's influence gone. The path to the Pool of Knowledge still carried much of the damage they'd inflicted on the land during their duel. Chunks of stone still littered the courtyard before the Font of Power, though they didn't linger. Downed trees gave testament to their strengthened powers.
The found the cavern much like it was before, concealing the Pool from the light, the white marble lining glistening in the gloom. Unlike before, and quite accurately copied when they saw it Beyond Shadows, a deep crack split the stonework in two. The water was completely gone, drained into the ground under the Pool's edifice.
Vestara was noticeably downtrodden upon seeing this. "Now how will few find the weapon?" She asked, "spend the rest of our near-immortal lives checking every square inch of the galaxy?"
Not quite as disheartened as she, Ben hopped down to the bottom of the Pool, now bone-dry. He crouched and ran his hand along the fissure. "It might not be quite that desperate, Ves."
"The water is gone, Ben!" Her voice raised an octave in frustration, there wasn't anything more they could do here.
"Yes," Ben answered calmly, "But just because it's not here, doesn't mean it no longer exists."
"You mean underneath?"
Ben gave a judicious nod and leapt back up to her. "I don't see any reason why not. Someone had to build all this," he gestured to the cavern, "The Pool itself couldn't fit through the cavern opening. If they created the cave, then why not something below? It's not like we have anything to lose."
Vestara looked weary, but gave her concurrence nonetheless. "On three?"
"Three," Ben said and pushed. Momentarily caught off guard, Vestara joined him and they focused their power on prying apart the two halves of the Pool's stone lining. Marble fractured and cracked, leaving a dusting on the bottom. Once enough of the flooring had been broken up, they took turns lifting out whole sections of it.
By the time they were done, they'd uncovered, buried beneath the Pool, what appeared to be tubes of ice. The solidified liquid formed hollow linings that led deeper beneath the earth. Suddenly looking much more upbeat, Vestara sent Ben a mischievous grin. "Looks like you were right, for once." She crawled down the side of the Pool to the uneven ground below.
Sticking his tongue out behind her, he took the faster route down and jumped again. "It looks like the water definitely went somewhere," he said, running a finger along one of the crystal-like tubes.
"Ben?" She called from sure footing on some of the marble left being. "Are you sure it's a good idea to be that close? We might have weakened the ground."
As if on cue, the dirt beneath Ben's feet shifted and the glass-ice cracked. Ben recalled, removed from his predicament, something Lon Shevu had told him in his early days at the GAG. If something might go wrong, it will. He scrambled for a holding, but the soil below his feet flowed too quickly.
Vestara realized what was happening when she saw the look on his face. The ground was giving way. She ran to the edge and reached out her long tentacle for him, but by then he was already falling. "You are not leaving me like this," she muttered, and dove in after him.
The fall was remarkably short-lived. Both Ben and Vestara were deposited rather awkwardly on top of a heap of dirt. Vestara spit out a mouthful of the stuff and gave Ben her best withering look. "Next time I ask if something is a bad idea, we'll just assume it is."
"No argument from me," he said, muffled under the debris. "Next time, you can go first."
"Ha ha, you're just a barrel of laughs—Ben, look at this," Vestara cut off her sarcasm when she'd looked around the room they'd fallen in.
Calling it a 'room' wasn't quite accurate. It was an underground expanse that could easily fit their ship and have room left over. There was one source of outside light in the far corner, illuminating a crude staircase, but the rest of the grotto wasn't dark. Scattered about it were meter-tall crystal-like towers. They glowed a wide range of colors from scarlet and magenta to viridian and teal. The rainbow of colors pulsed and lit the subterranean cavern.
"Wow," Ben breathed as he got up to look around. He dusted off his cloths and joined Vestara at the foot of the mound. They were bathed in a kaleidoscope of color, there had to be dozens of towers in here, all a unique shapes and hues.
Vestara walked up to the nearest one, a yellowish green shard. She tentatively reached out her hand to it, her fingertips just brushing the polished side. She gasped and flinched back as she felt a static shock from the beryl gem. Ben was at her side as soon as he'd heard the sound. He'd just gotten there as a thin vine sprouted from the cavern floor. "Ves?" He asked. "Are you okay?"
"It's knowledge," she murmured more to herself than him.
"What?"
"The stones, they're repositories of knowledge," she repeated. "Watch this."
The small vine that had sprouted curled upward, as if reaching for the nonexistent sun. Broad leafs uncoiled from the stem. Ben watched as she manipulated the plant, not unlike Abeloth had done to them. He reached out his own hand and touched the tower. The same shock, and he knew. It was odd, to know exactly how to do something without ever having practiced. A small shrub of his own joined Vestara's on the ground.
"Fascinating," he spoke in the same hush as she'd done moments before. "They must be ancestors of holocron crystals, a way to pass on information."
As one they looked around them, all the other shapes and colors waiting to be embraced. "Wait," Ben held up his hand, "We need to find the water first."
Vestara's crimson eyes were alight in anticipation of what was kept here, such power hidden. But she reluctantly understood their mission needed to come first. "Spoilsport."
They investigated the ground around where they'd fallen in. Weaving its way out from under the dirt mound was a small ice-like flow. From what he'd seen so far, Ben suspected that the waters from the Pool had solidified when they touched anything that wasn't the marble base. The strange thing, though, was the 'ice' more resembled hardened quartz than anything frozen. He called Vestara over and they followed the trail.
At the very end, they found a rounded tail of the flow. Cupped at the tip was the barest amount of liquid that there could be. Somehow, they knew that the little that remained wouldn't give them the far-reaching knowledge they'd had before. There simply wasn't enough left, it would give them just what they needed, but nothing more. They could see the changed future, what would happen to the galaxy, or seek the location of the dagger they needed to kill Abeloth. To make matters worse, there was only enough for one.
"You take it," Vestara said, "You'd have the best hope of knowing where it is when you see it."
Seeing her logic, he leaned over and ran his tongue over the last of the water. He focused his mind on finding the dagger. He was hurling through Wild Space, coordinates floating in his head. He saw a gigantic structure, like twin pyramids placed base-to-base. A gateway to the land where the blade was kept. He was just about to peer onto the planet itself, but the properties of the water failed him. He opened his eyes to Vestara's perpetually grinning face, his head cupped in her arms. "Ben, can you hear me?"
Taking one hand to squeeze her shoulder he nodded. "I'm good, I saw where we have to travel to. It's somewhere in Wild Space, but I've got the coordinates." He did his best to project what he'd seen into her mind, their connection made it easier, but it was no substitute for seeing it firsthand.
Sitting up, Ben could tell Vestara wanted to do something. Like a child eager to do something they probably shouldn't, but unable not to, she fidgeted. "What is it?" He asked.
"Well," she used the verbal pause to figure out how to phrase it to get what she wanted, "since we know where we have to go, maybe we could investigate this cave more?"
Cutting through her undoubtedly convoluted reasoning, Ben just came out with it. "You want to 'investigate' the rest of the knowledge-crystals, don't you?"
"Yes," she admitted, apparently not much sense in being coy when your partner could read you as well as he could. "I want to see what is down here."
It went against what he'd been taught, this knowledge came without a price, without the training that made someone worthy to wield it, but he understood her desire. There was so much here they could see. They didn't actually have to use all they learned, he had, after all, learned how to Flow-Walk from the Aing-Tii monks but decided he'd never use it again. Just how much of that was rationalization, he couldn't be sure. Vestara wanted to quite badly, and she was half of his being now, so he agreed.
They started from the one where they'd gained control over plant-life and spiraled outward. They quickly found that the abilities stored weren't limited to alignment. Indigo Orthorhombic imparted the intricacies of Force Lightning, something Vestara was conversant with, but Ben had never known. A rough acid-yellow rock gave the basic understanding of telekinesis. Not all were common abilities. A vibrant sapphire shrouded in a cool mist and a steaming lava-like red-orange offered the secrecy of ice and fire respectively, manipulating heat to affect those extremes.
Near the end of their systematic collection of knowledge, they came upon an obsidian pyramid that contained the capacity to drain energy from others. Looking at her pale hand, Vestara found this one of the more disturbing powers, though they'd already taken in a number of potent Dark Side abilities, abilities she knew Ben would never let either of them use. "Is this how she feeds?" Vestara asked.
Ben was lost in his own world at that moment. True, he understood such a power was inherently aligned with darkness, he could feel such life blistering off of this world. There was another side, though healing facilitated through that surfeit life energy. He drew in some of the excess and for the first time felt some of the hunger they'd had to live with subside.
"Ben, what are you doing?" She shook him after he didn't answer her the first time.
"Can't you feel it?" He asked.
"Feel what?"
Ben raised his hands. "The life around us. We don't need to take too much from one thing."
She reached out, like she had felt Ben doing, but couldn't figure out what he was talking about. "I don't feel anything different, Ben."
"I'll show you," He too both her arms, fingers intertwine with hers and her tendril wrapped around his other. He forced the life energy he'd taken in down his arms to her. "Take it."
She drew on what she'd just gained from the crystal, focusing intently on just draining what Ben was giving. Vestara could feel it filling the gap she had inside, the void that IV bags hadn't been able to fill. "How are you doing that?" She asked, slightly awed and relieved that this didn't seem to be hurting Ben.
"You can't feel the excess energy?"
"No, I can't," she considered it. Reaching out she tried to draw on the energy field Ben seemed to perceive, but her malignant powers corrupted her attempt, forcefully draining energy in a way that left the planet and its inhabitants weakened. If she truly force it, she felt like she could kill the world. She turned to Ben. "Why can't I do it like you?"
"I don't know," he admitted, "but as long as this works, you can feed though me."
Vestara was getting more of a complete picture of what Abeloth must have gone through alone here. She wouldn't have had anyone to soothe the Dark Side's call or sate her hunger. Vestara could see how closely she and Ben were tied together, how much she now relied on him, and what she would have become without him. "I—thank you."
He didn't need to say anything more, so he didn't. Once he replenished what she'd taken, they move on to the last gem in the cave they've yet to touch. This one was somewhat different from the others. The main body was an oblong opal, sheared through with a rainbow of colors, always shifting and changing. "What do you think it is?" He asked.
Vestara ruby pinpricks of light danced in anticipation, she had high hopes for this one. None of the others had what she was looking for down here, but this could be it. "Let's find out," she said, pressing her palm to the side, Ben followed suit.
A second after touching it, her hand morphed and melted like her other had at the Jedi Temple, and coiled around the crystal like a constrictor. Tears welled up in her eyes, it was what she was wishing for, the opal had given them what they needed to control their shape. She raised her arms up to her face and concentrated. After an initial twinge of hesitation, both coils resolved back into her hands. "It worked, Ben!"
Ben had been experimenting on his own, his left arm morphing at will to a tentacle much like the one Vestara had wielded. He was broken out of his revere by a joyous Vestara. While she still had the dark aura to her being, it was undercut by the sheer happiness she felt. It was infectious, Ben ready to meet her kiss as soon as she moved to do so.
Still embraced, but lips no longer together, they rested their foreheads on one another. Ben had to admit that many of the abilities they'd seen were ones he'd never wanted, nor would ever use, but the last two made up for the rest. They were no longer relegated to a life of intravenous nourishment and could at least look normal again. He knew Vestara had lost much of her hatred for their 'true' forms now, but they both knew that this made interacting with the rest of the galaxy much easier. "Do you want to do the rest of it now?" He asked, though he had a pretty good guess what she'd say.
"Yes, please," she took them both to the ground, taking cross-legged positions when they were down.
Looking at one another, they closed their eyes and brought the focus of their minds to their faces, their ear-to-ear grins and star-like eyes. They gave a mental push, willing it to take the form they'd had before. It felt strange, far more that their arms did. They didn't really want to watch the other, it was strange enough feeling their cheeks stitching themselves together.
When it was done, they opened their eyes and saw the other. Ben raked his eyes, now lacking the sparking blue gleam, over Vestara's face. Her dark brown eyes, fair skin, small mouth—
"Ves."
"What?"
He reached out his hand and gently rubbed her lip, the spot he knew there should have been a scar. He didn't actually voice his thoughts, but she knew what he meant. Like one picture bleeding though another, a small scratch mark, curved upward, came through, giving her the appearance of a smirk. Ben leaned over and put his lips to it. With his face next to hers, he whispered. "Don't ever be ashamed to be who you are with me, Ves."
Her russet eyes, now lacking her scarlet spark within, met his. "You're going to spoil me, you know."
"Not if I'm telling the truth."
They sat there in the cavern for a full minute, reveling in what they'd learned. The glows from the gems cast intricate patterns over them. Feeling they'd done all they could, Ben rose. "We should get back to the ship, we have what we came for and more," he said. "Now we need to get that dagger."
Feeling much more like her old self, it was amazing what gaining her hand back had done psychologically, Vestara joined Ben and pulled him close. "I like a man with a plan."
"And if said plan only went as far as the stairs?"
"I never said it had to be a good plan," she jeered, "plus you get points for keeping good company, Dear."
Ben craned his neck. "Did you just call me 'dear?'"
"Maybe," she said as seriously as possible.
"Why do I have a bad feeling about that?"
"Maybe."
"That wasn't even a coherent answer to my question."
She couldn't keep a straight face any longer and burst out a gleeful grin. "Maybe."
"Evil!"
Her mirth echoed off the subterranean walls as they ascended the stairs into the light. They emerged to a hidden alcove in the hill that housed the Pool of Knowledge before it had been destroyed. The overgrowth in this area was extensive, but they found their way to the mouth of the cave they'd entered from fairly quickly. Vestara took great delight in freezing the trunks of trees that had fallen in their path and cracking them in two.
When they reached the cavern's threshold, the ruined marble edifice within, they paused. "Should we just leave it open?" Ben asked.
"What do you mean?"
Ben titled his head toward the entrance. "That crystal cave underneath, it could be dangerous if the wrong person finds it."
"Who would find it? This is an abandoned planet in the middle of a bunch of black holes," Vestara chuckled. "Not that high on most tourists' itineraries."
"Still, we aren't the only ones who know about the Pool's existence."
Vestara shrugged, not particularly feeling one way or the other on the subject. She gestured with her right hand. a wall of vines and trees sprouted and grew like weeds. The ivy ropes tied a tight web of plant matter to seal the opening. "Better?"
Ben looked on with approval, there was no way to tell this was a cave any longer, the trees blended in quite well with the surrounding forest. Only someone who'd been here before would know that something was different, and the only three left alive who had been were the pair of them and his father. He was also pleased she hadn't just collapsed the cave, it wouldn't have felt right destroying the place. "Thanks."
They cut a short path through the underbrush back to the ocean and felt the salty spray cool them as they stepped onto the rocky dune. When they got out into the open, they saw it sitting right next to the Rook. The non-reflective grey hull of the Horizon-class Star Yacht was one neither could easily forget. They immediately reached out through the Force and heard a light thump as someone landed behind them. They turned in synch to the man standing at the precipice of the forest.
A slight tug to the corner of his lips have Ben a slight smile, though this one wasn't quite full of the happiness it normally would be when he saw the man. "Hello, Dad."
Author's Note: I put in a lot here, and I hope I covered everything I wanted to. The whole part about there being a space under the Pool of Knowledge and all the information crystals inside is completely my own, it's fan-made. I would like to know what everyone thought of it, though. I wanted to give them a believable way of sustaining themselves apart from what Abeloth does and a way for them to not be stuck in one form. After all, there really isn't all that much on how Abeloth learned to do what she can. The abilities themselves actually exist, though.
Another thing I'm kind of struggling with is Ben and Vestara's relationship. I don't want to make it too sappy, I'm hoping that having Vestara continually concerned with her appearance undercut it a bit. I also seem to keep wanting to throw in parasitic aspects to their relationship. Haven't quite figured out why. Maybe I'm just cruel.