Brilliant, on a curve of Skywalker

It was all over, or at least as over as it was going to get for a while. Their Fandom friends and the Jeesh returned to their separate universes after Jaina's wedding. Allana's identity was no longer a secret, Wynn Dorvan was running the galaxy, the Jedi were leaving Coruscant permanently, and Luke, well. The meddroids said that Luke would never fully recover from his attack on Abeloth. Ben tried not to think about that.

Ben was trying not to think at all.

He was clearing out the last of the stuff in his room when a hollow ache started to build inside, and then his vision narrowed and went completely black. He thought for a minute that he might be passing out--he'd certainly done enough of that recently--but there was no dizziness or nausea to suggest that the vision change was the result of a concussion. He braced a hand on the nearest wall and stood waiting for his sight to return.

Instead, stars and nebulae began to appear in the darkness, rushing toward him at extreme velocity, but with no noticeable red-shift and without spreading apart as they drew closer. He began to feel apprehensive and disoriented, as though he were traveling through a galaxy far different from the one his parents had known.

He saw Coruscant mottled by patches of flickering red flame and black banks of drifting smoke, and beyond it there was a legion of dark silhouettes rising from a shadow-cloaked world, fanning out across the galaxy to meet a much smaller force of luminous shapes.

He saw a pair of tiny disembodied eyes floating through the darkness, collecting wisps of drifting gas and specks of loose dust, in its endless patience swaddling itself in the stuff of cold matter.

And Ben saw his cousin Allana, a young girl sitting cross-legged in front of a white throne, playing with her pet nexu while a small circle of Jedi fought a desperate battle at the foot of the dais, holding off an endless onslaught of beings. There were dark silhouettes and bejeweled women and horned aliens, and every so often a gray tentacle, which would appear on the steps to the dais and attempt to slip past unnoticed before a lightsaber descended to send it skittering back into the darkness.

Ben felt a sudden, overwhelming, flash of anger. All of the pain of the last few years--the last month--and nothing had changed. The Jedi would forever fight the darkness, Abeloth would go on feinting and parrying, the Sith would peek back out from whatever rock they'd gone to ground under...it was pointless.

He glanced at the faces around Allana, looking for familiar ones, and to his surprise didn't see his father. Luke fought the darkness as easily as he breathed, and a Jedi Order without Luke Skywalker was one that, while inevitable, still took Ben's breath away. Ender had pointed out many times that the Order needed to refocus, learn to work without a Skywalker, but a vision of that as reality was both painful and a bit of a relief.

His vision gradually returned to the here and now instead of the future, and he was still feeling off-balance and angry. Why did they fight so hard and lose so much when it never changed anything?

He glanced down at his lightsaber and a thought occurred to him. He could change himself...

( Let's have a heart-to-heart with Ender! )

( Four years of Ben's life have led up to this moment. )

[OOC: Borrowed, then modified, from Troy Denning's Apocalpyse. Preplayed with the fabulous endsthegame, and concluding our two week spam of your flist!]

Ben could think of about ten thousand planets--including Hoth, Tatooine, Ziost, and the stupid hole the Hidden One had lived in--before he'd have voluntarily set foot on before Dromund Kaas, a planet so seeped in the dark side that Luke had erased it from star charts and general Jedi records for the safety of the public.

But here he was anyway, stomping through the humid guck with his father, his cousin, and Vestara, searching for Abeloth and trying not to lose his lunch because of the physical and spiritual nausea he was feeling.

“I don’t like this,” Luke said without preamble an hour into their search. “More than half a dozen places searched and no one’s found anything. Nothing at all.”

“Well,” Ben offered, “the galaxy is a fairly large place.”

“Of course,” Luke said, “but we should still be finding something. If nothing else, I’m surprised Abeloth hasn’t taunted us in some way. She needs an audience. This absolute inability to find anything at all, about either her and Ship or the Lost Tribe—” He shook his head. “It’s not adding up. She’s not hiding from us because she’s afraid. She’s hiding because she’s planning something. Combine that with the same inexplicable disappearance of the Lost Tribe—I’m willing to bet that they’re working together. They’re planning something. And when Abeloth and the Lost Tribe drop out of sight to plan something—it’s going to be very big, and very bad.”

Ben sighed. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to find them here.”

( Sith are drama queens, news at 11. )

[OOC: Adapted from Christie Golden's Ascension. Warnings for NPC death and soooo much scenery chewing.]

( When we'd left our intrepid heroes, they were running awaaaaaaaaaay. They're still doing that. )

[And we're wrapped! Preplayed with the fabulous selfhelphero, screwyoumarvel, dollpocalypse, and hoorayimrich as Tony and as omnomnomtech. NFB, NFI, void in Japan.]

Dathomir, Ben thought a little darkly, was picking up where the Maw had left off. First they'd been hassled by a low-level bureaucrat for even being on the planet, then they'd run into one of the Dathomiri witches who'd used Force lightning to short-circuit their lightsabers, comm equipment, and unfortunately, the speeders they'd been riding on.

So now they were tromping through the rain forest on foot, following the blood trail that Luke had put on the Sith girl and trying to avoid the increasingly devious traps the Dathomiri witch was placing in front of them. Ben was currently meditating while Luke and Ender stood watch, trying to get a better idea of where their little shadow was hiding.

He reached into the Force and found...Aunt Leia. He let out a sigh of relief and set her a Force-pulse of reassurance--the mental equivalent of a smile--and then looked around for the Dathomiri witch. He found her nearby: stringing cord to turn a patch of poorly balanced boulders on a hillside into a dangerous deadfall. She was unhappy about it, Ben could tell, upset that this trap was so much more dangerous than the other ones, but she wanted, needed them to go away.

He opened up his eyes again. "We still need to head northwest?" he asked his father, who nodded. "Then we need to watch out for rockfalls." He smiled at Ender. "I have our tactic all prepared: when the rocks fall, we get out of the way."

( The exploits of Ben Skywalker, master tactician, continue! )

[OOC: Taken and tweaked from Aaron Allston's Backlash in the Fate of the Jedi series. NFI, NFB, say hello to Vestara, everyone.]

The repairs were finished on the ship, and Luke still hadn't returned from beyond shadows. Ben was returning from his daily trip to check on him (his dad's suck-nozzle kept shifting out of his mouth and he was getting pretty dehydrated), and had poked around some of the other ships looking for anything food-like.

The Mind Drinkers had made themselves at home as visitors in the Shadow and were going through provisions faster than Ben had thought possible. At this point, the first thing they'd have to do when they left the Maw was get more supplies. At the beginning it had been worth it to get them to feel comfortable and learn about how they'd ended up here, but Ben was getting uncomfortable with how comfortable two of them in particular--Rolund and Rhondi Tremaine--had gotten with just stopping by to talk to Ender for hours. And eating everything in sight.

Ben wasn't jealous. At all. Really.

And also shut up.

"Ender?" he called as he stepped aboard the ship again. "You around?"

( Where Ben goes a little crazy. Maybe. A tad. )

Ben stretched his arms up over his head as he exited the Senate Building, falling behind Jaina, his father, aunt and uncle and the gaggle of Jedi Masters in order to talk with Ender more privately. "I know I promised you boring, but I didn't think it was going to be that stupefying. I think the Bothan diplomat could be hired out as an insomnia cure."

"I think I died a couple of times during the speeches," Han agreed. "Leia kept poking me and starting my heart again."

"Like this?" Leia asked, jabbing him under the ribs with two fingers.

Ben grinned and flipped his comlink back on, smiling over as his father's began beeping to signify how many messages he'd been left. "Busy day to come."

Luke's attention has focused elsewhere. Four dark blue personnel transport speeders, traveling in a tight chain just above pedestrian head height. That in itself wasn't unusual; troops were often used for offer security. But they showed up before the event began, not after it ended.

"Ben." Luke kept his voice low. "Drop back, blend with the crowd. Call Nawara Ven."

( Anyone else have a bad feeling about this? )

[OOC: Adapted from Aaron Allston's Outcast in the Fate of the Jedi series. Preplayed with the always amazing endsthegame. NFB, NFI.]