Begeren, 1039 BBY

There were things that were rare to see in Begeren. Serenity, tranquility… Peace, Arcadia could say. That wasn’t part of the everyday life of a system immersed in an eternal war against the whole rest of the galaxy. But something else that lacked in that planet was the slight sound of the water drops falling from the sky. Rain.

In Begeren, it rained once a month, sometimes less than that. But lately, it’d been much lesser. In the last fifteen years, she could count in her fingers the moments in which she’d seen rain.

And she missed it. She missed… Rain.

That day was one of the almost inexistent rainy days. It had started early in the morning, with a couple of drops here and there echoing through the silence of the palace, calm and harmless. But Arcadia knew it wasn’t like that. After some time, the drops became faster, harder, and in a couple of minutes they had turned into a storm, a symphony of raging water. The tears of the dark sky, with thunders that were its screams, and the lightening that came before them, its source of power. An unbeatable, untamable power, coming from the core of the most furious and aching soul. She could hear it saying, loud and clear: you underestimated me.

Right now, however, it had ceased, like it always did after two or three hours, and the sun was bleeding in the horizon, spreading its punishing rays through the whole planet, drying even the small water drops that still insisted in falling down. No matter how strong the storm was, how deafening the thunders were, the sun always prevailed over it. But even if she knew that, even if she had all the proofs that it would happen this way forever and ever, Arcadia still asked herself.

When would it not prevail? When would the drops of water prevail? Once, she’d seen the stunning work of art that sun and rain could create together. She’d never seen something so beautiful… But it was a long time ago, when she used to love the sun. Now, she wondered when it had become so cold.

It was past half the morning still, everything was luminous beyond the palace, Arcadia could see that through the windows of the imperial suite, which she’d seen drying completely for how long she’d been inside the room since she’d woken up. Looking through the windows was a habit she had since she’d gotten to that planet, more than thirty years ago. Through joy or through pain, that view was her never-ending company.

She was only taken out of it when she heard someone approaching the door. Arcadia sighed. She knew there were things for her to do that day, and yet she kept on procrastinating. “Come in,” the door opened behind her, and when she turned back, she spotted the slim figure in the dark blue uniform coming inside. “Good morning, Maya.”

Maya returned her greetings with a small reverence. “I know it’s still early, but the Emperor requests your presence for the speech,” she lowered her hazel eyes. “I’m sorry for interrupting your meditation…”

Arcadia lowered her eyes as well. “It’s okay, I wasn’t meditating today,” she tranquilized her handmaid. Maya had always been attentive, to the point of memorizing her Empress’ habits even when she didn’t share them widely. Maya was actually the only one in the palace who knew Arcadia had been meditating with the Force for almost fifteen years now. She didn’t want anyone talking that out… And Maya had been keeping it a secret too, probably because she knew the reason for that.

“He’s probably still going to take some minutes to start, so I found it prudent to let you know now, so that you’re able to fulfill your duties in time,” the handmaid gave her a soft smile. Even after all those years, they still looked very much like each other, everyone always said. Arcadia never doubted it. When Maya smiled like that, she could almost see a reflection of her own affectionate hopeful face.

One that she’d lost long ago. “Thank you,” she said, walking to the door. Maya had actually given her some minutes to do one thing she couldn’t overlook.

The handmaid went to the walk-in closet to get the slight silk cape that fit the black dress with silver details the Empress was wearing, and Arcadia let her put it in her back, like Maya helped her to do most mornings. “I’ll be absent for about an hour during the speech. I’ve got to buy new fabric for your dresses–”

“Why didn’t you ask the merchants to bring the pieces here?” Arcadia asked.

Maya noticed her worried tone, as always. “Don’t worry, you’re not giving me way too much work, my Empress,” she replied. “Although walking to the market is always a long way, sometimes the best products don’t come officially, you know?” she laughed a little. “I could just send the girls, but I choose the best fabrics by myself ever since your wedding and–”

The handmaid stopped talking and looked away. Arcadia saw her embarrassment quickly, much like the subject that’d caused it.

She’d never forbidden Maya from mentioning her marriage, but they used to avoid it in their conversations. The wedding and the children that had come from it, for whose layettes Maya had personally chosen the fabrics. Dark-silver for Garron, navy-blue for Horrak… And Hammyn… And pearl-white for…

Arcadia stopped herself from thinking. If she let those memories come, she’d keep on remembering those colors forever. Those and the others that came after them…

And never got to be used.

“Thank you so very much,” Arcadia said. “Be safe in your way to the market,” Maya made a quick reverence and walked out of the room, which Arcadia also did. She followed her handmaid with the eyes until she lost her down the palace hallways when she moved towards where the handmaids slept. She had to put on her disguise to get off palace, generally clothes that covered her whole body and most of her face, a safety measure all servants had to attend. You never knew when someone would try to break into the palace somehow, to bring down the Emperor of Four Systems.

Five. She’d been trying to change the number in her head since last week, when after a battle that lasted for months, Vorr’zell had conquered the Ashas Ree System, adding one more system to his titles. Or ambitions, or whatever it was… She’d ceased to care about that.

Arcadia could have gone down a shorter way, directly to the throne room, where the speeches were transmitted, but she crossed some more hallways to go to another room first. When she approached the open door, she started hearing their voices, and stood by the wall for a second, just listening to their sound.

“…when they got to put me down, I swear I thought I’d die. I could feel the red sabers igniting, it’s scary. Don’t tell father I said that.”

The first voice was laughing and excited, like she’d gotten used to hear, but the next one, although it had the exact same sonority, was spoken in the opposite tone.

“How am I ever gonna tell? He barely talks to me.”

Arcadia closed her eyes for a second. How could the voices of Horrak and Hammyn be so identical and sound so different?

Horrak sighed. “Hammyn, that’s not–”

“I know you’re there, mother,” Hammyn interrupted his brother. This time, it was Arcadia to sigh.

“Well, you save me the time of announcing myself,” she said, smiling guiltily when she entered the room.

Hammyn had been sleeping in that room since he was about ten years old, when he and Horrak had gone for separate bedrooms. Arcadia was now used to seeing him lying in that bed all day and night, unable to move any part of his body, that’d grown a lot skinnier ever since… Well, everything. Although by now it’d become like a gray stone fact in Arcadia’s mind, sometimes she couldn’t help remembering that day, when she was talking to the cookers and heard her sons screaming. She didn’t know what was happening, but she felt the tragedy coming. Maybe it was the Force warning her.

Maybe it was only a mother’s intuition.

Regardless of what it was, she was torn apart by the results of that moment every day, even now, fifteen years later.

“Good morning, mother,” Hammyn said. Arcadia ignored her thoughts and smiled at him.

“How did you spend the night?” she asked.

“Same as always. I don’t know why you keep on asking,” Hammyn always talked like that. The mother just tried not to care.

“I worry about you,” she said. Hammyn was looking at her with the corner of his eyes, since he couldn’t move his neck, but he looked away when she said that.

“At least you do…” he sighed.

Horrak looked at him. “Father hasn’t forgotten about you… He talks about you every day–”

“But he barely comes to see me,” Hammyn interrupted. “You don’t have to lie, I know he’s given up on me.”

Arcadia took a deep breath, because she knew it was true, indeed. “Well, but I haven’t,” she said. “I’ll keep on trying my best to keep you comfortable and make you part of our lives here. You’re my son.”

“And our brother, never forget.”

The voice came from the door, making Arcadia turn to it, where she spotted Garron coming in.

His long hair was tied back as always, different from Horrak and Hammyn’s, which remained short as it’d been for years. It gave her a perfect view of his no-longer-so-young face, although she still saw him as her first-born boy, even with the wrinkles coming up in his skin, and the beard he started wearing some years ago.

“Don’t forget that the Force still runs in your veins,” he continued. This time, he finally got to make Hammyn smile slightly.

“Okay, let me get back to where I stopped,” Horrak returned to what he was telling his brother when Arcadia arrived, and she just watched them until Garron approached.

“Father’s waiting for you,” he said.

“I know,” Arcadia replied. “I’m heading to the throne room now.”

Garron nodded. “It’s a glorious day, he’s really satisfied with our conquers… I know it might be hard, but try to enjoy it and pass confidence during his speech, the people all over the Five Systems are going to watch it. It’s better for everyone.”

Arcadia looked away, to the door she knew she had to cross to go meet her duties as Empress. Just a couple of hours, she kept on telling herself. Not just now, but during the last fifteen years.

“I will,” she replied to Garron, kissing his cheek like she used to do ever since he was a child, and then leaving the three brothers in the room and going down the stairs close to it, crossing all the hallways and doors and heading to the biggest room in the palace, in which she entered with her head high and emotionless like a statue.

The throne room was beautiful, she had to admit that; light-colored, bright because of the sunlight that came inside, and delicately painted and decorated with brilliant ornaments. She used to love that, but now all she could pay attention to was the big dark grey throne in front of the white wall with a big window on top, where Vorr’zell was seated, wearing his glorious black armor and long cape.

Their eyes met in a second while Arcadia walked to him. He was always cold and stoic, the powerful Emperor of Five Systems, an image she’d gotten used to by now, although she never forgot how it used to be; the man who slept by her side and woke up along with her for decades now, the one she’d once been proud and happy to call her husband.

It seemed like hundreds of years away, but at the same time, as close as yesterday.

Arcadia arrived at the throne, and Vorr’zell stared at her. “Black again?”

She didn’t bother to look at her own dress. “If you have any problem with black, then wear another color yourself,” Vorr’zell laughed for a second, rolling his yellow scratched eyes. “Go on with the speech, the faster you finish it, the sooner I’ll be liberated from pretending glory.”

Vorr’zell’s sigh got on her nerves. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

It was her time to give a sarcastic laugh, then. “Dramatic,” Arcadia had heard that word quite a lot by now, enough to make her angry whenever someone said that. But deep inside she knew that her anger was a shield to prevent her pain from showing too much.

Wearing black every day wasn’t enough when it came to that.

“Don’t forget the celebration after the speech,” Vorr’zell said.

“How could I possibly forget?” Arcadia asked coldly.

Vorr’zell sighed again. “Can you at least not seem like you’re on a funeral?”

“Too bad that I am.”

She didn’t want to have seen Vorr’zell’s face at that moment, but she ended up seeing his annoyed eyes looking at her anyway. “Arcadia…”

But she didn’t lose the opportunity to return it. Not when it came to that specific subject. “You don’t care enough to remember, but a year ago I buried a child I didn’t even get to know. And about fifteen years ago I lost…”

Arcadia couldn’t continue. Of course he remembered, it was ridiculous to have to repeat that… After all, he’d been responsible for those things himself. Not just the two she’d mentioned now, but the four others that’d come between them.

Sometimes she couldn’t believe she’d grown used to calling her children things. But she had, even if she’d sworn to herself never to do such a thing. Not even considering how those last five babies had come to exist.

Leesya had been the last pregnancy she’d wanted. That was how she planned to call her if she’d survived the birth. She wouldn’t consider getting pregnant again, not after what happened a month after Leesya’s death… But she’d gotten. Against her will.

When she looked at Vorr’zell now, it seemed like none of that had ever happened. Pretending was like any other ability; you got better at it the more you practiced. And Arcadia had practiced a lot. Being at his side by day, sleeping in the same bed every night, not telling anyone that he’d told her they needed more children, demanding her to have them, in the only… Possible way, if she could say just that. Of course, everyone deduced what was happening, very easily in fact, but no one dared to say a thing, so she didn’t say it either.

She’d only tried once, after the first time. She didn’t think she’d live through that, so she ran to Garron and begged him to leave Begeren with her, taking his brothers and disappearing from that planet for good.

“What the hell are you thinking, mother?” with her son’s answer, she knew it would never work, but despair kept her insisting. She only stopped when Garron questioned her what she would do about Hammyn.

She knew she couldn’t leave him behind, but it would be equally impossible to take him away at the state he was, at least if she tried to do it alone. And although Garron was right at his rational considerations, she knew it wasn’t the reason for him to despise the idea of going away.

He was the Emperor’s first-born. The one to be the ruler of everything that’d been conquered one day. And although she’d carried, fed and raised him with all of her love and kindness… What was he away from the father he idolized so much?

Horrak did nothing but following Garron’s steps when it came to that, so Arcadia realized she was alone. And she’d never leave Hammyn, really… So she was stuck in that palace no matter what happened.

Even with all that, she carried the five pregnancies that came after that with all the caring a mother could have… And not even that had been enough. The first died at birth. A little girl, again. The next two didn’t even get to be born. After that, she buried a boy, and she thought he’d be the last one, but one more came. Again, a miscarriage, that almost killed her in the process. But she survived, even though the same didn’t happen to her uterus.

That was the tragic end of at least that hell she was living through.

“Zarrain is alive, don’t act like you don’t believe that,” Vorr’zell interrupted Arcadia’s memories, and again, she had to hold back a fury rush.

If she believed Rain was alive? She felt it. That was, in fact, the reason why she’d started meditating with the Force, and kept on doing that all this time: to reach out to her. In vain, all times, because she couldn’t see any image of Rain, let alone try any sort of communication, but she could feel her.

Or better: she could feel her suffering. “I know she’s alive,” Arcadia replied, still angry. “And I also know that you threw your own daughter in a hellhole to punish her, and that’s the reason for my dramatic grieving in the first place.”

Again, the only thing Vorr’zell did was sigh. “You know nothing, Arcadia.”

Before Arcadia could reply, she heard a loud noise sounding out of the blue, and recognized it in less than a second: the attack alarm.

Suddenly, they heard steps coming to the throne room, and quickly a soldier appeared, rushing in his black armor. The High Justice. Arcadia would recognize his light skin and long blonde dreadlocks anywhere.

“What happened?” Vorr’zell quickly asked.

“They’re reaching our atmosphere. I think it’s retaliation for Ashas Ree,” the High Justice replied. Arcadia knew the Sith didn’t easily accept a defeat, but she didn’t think they’d attack Begeren so soon after losing one of their systems like that.

Vorr’zell didn’t seem to think that either. “How strong will they reach us?”

“With full force, I’m afraid,” the High Justice answered.

Vorr’zell got up from his throne and looked at his wife. “Go back inside,” Arcadia didn’t reply, just left the room and rushed to a safer side of the palace, wondering if Maya had already returned. But well, all those who lived in Begeren were used to the security procedures for external attacks.

 

 

After all, nothing in that planet was ever tranquil. And for some strange reason, Arcadia felt like it would get quite agitated there from that new attack on.

Zarrain’s back was laying against the cold wall of her cell while she sat in her bed, her knees bent as she rested her arms between them, her thin bony legs a little bit spread with the crack of light shining upon them, reaching some part of her face too. She’d gotten used to the darkness of that place, as she’d never been afraid of the dark, but sometimes she felt angry for barely seeing. That wasn’t one of those days.

The light crack lighted her cell enough for her to spot the dark stains in her already dirty sheets. By now, it would be hard to tell what color the stains were looking only there. Unfortunately, the same stains were in her legs as well, and she saw clear enough to know they were red.

That much of blood everywhere was disgusting, mainly after so many days, because after it got dry, it would stick on everything, and it was impossible to clean it. Zarrain didn’t remember having any big contact with blood when she was still… In the palace. That’s why she was so scared when she saw a big amount of it for the first time, mainly because of the smell. She remembered how bitter and rotten it felt like it was just yesterday.

But maybe that was because she would feel the smell she felt that day very, very often ever since then. Many of the experiments caused bleeding, but not as much as that torture specifically.

Incredibly, after so much time, the first time it’d happened was still in her memory.

She didn’t know how long it’d been since she’d been thrown in the Sanitarium, but her hair had already fallen completely, and was starting to grow again, in the blood-red color now, and Zarrain was noticing changes throughout her body. She was much skinnier than before, but her hips and breasts were starting to grow bigger, when, on a certain day, she found a little blood stain in her sheets. She didn’t realize back then where it was coming from. All she knew was that she felt a strange and painful warmth in the lower part of her belly, and when the Anomids came to her later on, she begged them not to experiment on her that day, because she was already in too much pain alone, and showed them the blood stain. Incredibly, they moved her to another cell – a much lighted one this time – and left her there, alone and untouched, for three days, in which more blood stains came. But eventually, the blood stopped coming and the cramps went away, and that was when the Anomids came back to her… And took her to the main chamber, where all the Cloistered awaited for the first time.

She had only seen some of them in some experiments, not all of them together. But from that day on, she begun to be taken to them very often. Most times, those dead creatures would use the Force on her to cause severe pain, shivers, heart racing, all together eventually. But sometimes they would also do what they’d done that first day… And also some days ago.

Eventually, Zarrain came to learn what that… Act… Was. That it had a name in her case, and another in others, because it could be different than that; natural, consensual and good. A Anomid told her all that, one that she believed to be a female. She was curious about how good that could be when it was named sex, but that Anomid whose name she didn’t know simply disappeared from the Sanitarium after that conversation. Zarrain never heard of her again.

However, she saw two other prisoners, a man and a woman, doing it some time later, when she was walking through a hallway to be taken back to her cell after an experiment. The way they looked at that moment seemed good, indeed… But after some time, in which she never saw those two again either, she came to know that the woman had been killed, because she’d gotten pregnant.

Things started making sense in her head at the time, and now, well, she understood everything perfectly. Sex between a man and a woman could cause the woman to get pregnant, and that bleeding that caused cramps on her every month was called period, which indicated that her reproductive system was working well and that she could get pregnant too. At least for some time, because after the years her bleedings grew sparse, to the point of barely happening by now.

She’d learned that and all she currently knew about how bodies and life worked simply by seeing, listening and even feeling. Whether it was an experiment, something she accidentally watched, a torture she lived or maybe her relieving intimate moments alone with herself – the only secret, if she could call it that, that she’d been able to keep inside there.

Sometimes she kept on looking at the wall, seated just like she was now, and imagined words written in front of her, to make sure she still knew how to write and read. Luckily, the memories of her former life kept on fresh in her mind. Luckily or not, she thought, because although she remembered words, places and even lightsaber duel movements she had seen there, she also kept in her memories the last moments she’d spent in the palace.

But how could anyone cause that much of disgrace to a person and expect them not to remember it? This question was always in her mind, both in the most painful moments and in those quiet hours she spent looking at nothing.

Zarrain was taken from her thoughts and almost jumped in her bed when she heard the door opening all of a sudden, and quickly a Anomid came inside. But she recognized it wasn’t Ylbov, for their skin was a little bit lighter. “Get out, time for your shower.”

She almost didn’t believe when she heard it. Before she could even notice, she’d gotten up and walked out of the cell, and the Anomid accompanied her through the hallway that would lead them to the upper floor, where the prisoners showered.

Everything in that place was hideous. Zarrain remembered every inch from every hallway and room by now, every little stain in the floor… Every little pain it represented, from all those who were stuck in there like her, living through the horror stories those walls told.

A woman. Old, maybe at her sixties. Stuck to the ceiling upside down with a small cut in her neck. Bled dry drop by drop util the floor was painted with her gone life, and along with it, the naked body of a little girl who was tied right below, receiving the red ink herself before it fell to the floor.

Zarrain could still hear the woman’s screams, but later on, they mingled with her own screams, that would still become deafening even to her own ears, like thunders on a storm. But no one would listen, and the ritual was redone whenever they wanted to get rid of a useless victim, and they had quite a lot of them. Of course, the Emperor wanted to punish more traitors than he could possibly count, specially the one from his own flesh. Zarrain begged the Anomids to kill her, many, many times, but her supplications were never answered. Instead, they kept on repeating that and uncountable other processes, again and again, in a never-ending torture.

She was bathed in so much blood that now it tasted sweet.

The chamber that was used to clean up the prisoners was larger than most there. Zarrain was used to that process as well; apparently, the Sanitarium didn’t have much water supply, so the Anomids used to group a lot of prisoners at once, take them all to that chamber, and some droids that controlled the pipes and electrical systems would throw a harsh water jet on them all for some minutes. They had this short time to get themselves the cleanest they could.

As always, the water was cold as ice, and when it reached Zarrain’s nude back, she felt like it was breaking her bones, which made her shiver, just like all the unknown prisoners who were undressed aside her. But she couldn’t waste much time feeling cold today; she had to clean the blood in her legs.

Rubbing her skin with her hands the hardest she could to cause enough friction to take the sticky stains away, she received the next water jets almost gladly, because they helped her to remove all that dirt. She avoided looking at the sides, because the vision of all those men and women of all species cleaning their own personal dirt was way too disgusting for her to bear. Instead, she looked at the floor, where the dirty water went down the drains, and also down a small crack, in which a tiny trickle could pass.

She’d probably find her cell wet when she was sent back to it.

That was a lucky day; after some more harsh jets, Zarrain managed to get her body free from the blood from the last ritual, and also remove some fallen wires of her hair. When it got wet, it took forever to dry back without any kind of warmth or natural light, so it dropped some water in the way while Zarrain was conducted back to her cell by another Anomid, after the collective shower was over and she was handed a new long and loose one-piece gray clothing to wear. However, before the door was opened, she saw some more Anomids coming from the other side of the hallway, and Ylbov was among them.

They quickly started talking with their fingers, like they always did among themselves, which made Zarrain alarmed. “What?” she questioned, but they didn’t pay attention. “What is it?”

Ylbov looked at her, then. “I finished the design of a new machine. We’ll take you to experience it now.”

Zarrain could barely believe that. “Ylbov, I just got myself cleaned–”

“Take her at once, we have no time to lose. Directly to the last floor,” Ylbov didn’t give her a chance to continue, and she felt right away two Anomids holding her arms and taking her from there.

Great. Now she’d be dirty for another week long.

When it came to Ylbov’s torture machines, she never knew what to expect. He didn’t use them at first, but after some time he must have run out of natural torture methods. Whatever was going to happen now, would bring her pain in parts of her body which the existence she wasn’t even aware of.

The most important thing Zarrain had learned in the Sanitarium was that there’s always a kind of pain you still don’t know.

That new machine had a kind of stretcher for the victim to lie at… And that was the only thing Zarrain could recognize among a bunch of wires, connectors, moving structures and metal. There seemed to be more metal in that machine than in all the structures of the chamber’s ceiling combined.

“Turn on the voltage on medium-high at first,” Ylbov was instructing some mechanic droids that came to adjust the machine, and Zarrain used to prefer when it happened, because he had to actually speak to them. But she wasn’t expecting what he said this time.

“What do you mean voltage?” she questioned the Sanitarium’s boss while his assistants put her on the stretcher. “Are you insane? I’m wet to the bone!”

Zarrain knew that thing would hurt, but the Anomids had never tried electricity and water combined, and she was well aware that it was no good at all.

“The injection will keep her system safe and at the same time send pain impulses directly to the nerves, so after we combine–” Ylbov talked to the droids like Zarrain wasn’t even there, but she didn’t ignore that.

“No, not a chance,” she started protesting, putting one of the Anomids away with her feet, but in less than a second the others held her down, and she kept on struggling against them even though. Pointless, because she knew that in a few minutes she’d be screaming her soul out no matter what, but panic didn’t let her stop.

Not at least until the Anomids got to immobilize her. “Ready to inject,” Ylbov ordered, and while she tried to get rid of the hands holding her in the stretcher, Zarrain saw one of the droids approach; a dirty-gray spheric machine with a red light blinking and curvy legs with claws in the end, and one of them held a needle connected to a tube she couldn’t even see the end. Her arm was stretched, and the Anomids would probably tie her to the stretcher right after injecting whatever that thing was in her veins. Still, Zarrain tried all she could to get away, and was already starting to scream when a blustering noise reached her ears, and she immediately felt her body being hurled to the floor with full strength.

A strong smell of dust came to Zarrain’s nose. With no idea of what was happening, she squeezed her eyes the fastest she could, but any quick movement she had was paralyzed for a moment when she opened them: at her side there were broken droids and a dead Anomid, Ylbov was fallen aside melted parts of his torture machine, which the only full part remaining was the stretcher, all dirty with dust and concrete pieces, and all of that was lighted as she’d never seen before.

Zarrain only realized after looking up and seeing an enormous hole in the ceiling: that was sunlight.

She felt her heart racing in her chest. She didn’t know what was happening, was that noise an explosion? She was looking at the sky, she was sure of that even if she hadn’t seen it for a lifetime… And there was something far away on it, sharp and fast: a ship.

Zarrain looked aside again. Ylbov was getting up, and so were some of the droids and Anomids that had fallen as well. What was happening didn’t matter; there was an opening right upon her, straight to the outside. If she crossed it, she could escape the Sanitarium.

In the mere blink of an eye, Zarrain got up and started to run.

“Stop her! Stop her now!” she heard a mechanical voice scream, but she didn’t turn back to see if it was Ylbov, another Anomid or a droid. The crater in the ceiling was close, but high. Thinking on a speed that only despair could provide, Zarrain saw that one of the metallic structures from the ceiling had partially fallen and was hanging from it.

The stretcher was close to her. If she jumped from upon it, maybe she could get enough impulse and reach that structure. Zarrain had no idea if that would work, but she had to try. And so she did.

Another mechanical scream sounded when she put her bare feet on the stretcher to jump, and she did it with such a strength that made her reach the hanging metallic structure so fast that it swayed away from the hole.

Zarrain held to the metal the tightest she could, her hands even ached, but she didn’t let go, and started trying to sway that hanging thing back to where the crater was. Below her, Anomids came from all sides, along with droids and other prisoners who probably heard the ceiling breaking and came to that room to try to escape as well, causing the biggest mess. Suddenly, then, when Zarrain was getting close to the crater again, another loud sound came, making everything tremble, and the hanging metal she held to went away again.

Yes, those were explosions.

At that point everyone was screaming down there, and Zarrain quickly started to sway the structure even more, because she knew it was her only chance to get close enough to jump through the hole in the ceiling. But then she saw, some yards away, more Anomids coming, but this time, along with some of the Cloistered.

Instantaneously, prisoners started falling to the floor and letting out moans of pain. Zarrain shivered.

“Bring her down! Now!” the order echoed through the noisy mess, loud enough for her to recognize it was Ylbov who screamed. Her heart raced even more. She knew that if the pain the Cloistered caused reached her too, she would fall in less than a second. She was hanging back to the crater again, and this time it didn’t matter if it was close enough or not. It was now or never.

Zarrain was starting to feel the pain reaching her feet when she finally jumped towards the crater. For a second, she thought her hands wouldn’t reach its borders.

But for a tiny inch, they did.

When Zarrain saw she was now hanging from the blown ceiling, and at the same time that the Cloistered were getting closer and her pain was increasing, she used all her strength to pull herself out, feeling scratches opening in her hands due to the broken concrete, but she had to go on. She only stopped when the sunlight touched all of her body, and she felt the hot concrete against her feet.

At first, the sun burned Zarrain’s eyes for reaching it directly, and she had to close them not to go blind. However, it lasted only a second, because she forced herself to open them again, and what she saw got her standing like a frozen statue: there were ships flying everywhere, so fast that she couldn’t see their shapes and how they looked, except for a somewhat trigonal one, that was standing far, out of atmosphere, but was big enough for her to see it from there. The sound of explosions echoed all around, and there was smoke in some places far away.

It was an attack, it could only be. Zarrain remembered them from when she was in the palace. She couldn’t see the city from that far, but most ships were heading to one same direction, and others were coming from somewhere close to there, fighting a huge battle in the air.

Zarrain blinked quickly, looking at the crater in the roof for a second and realizing that some droids were coming up already, using climbing claws. She didn’t remember seeing such droids before, but at that moment all she could feel was adrenaline rushing into her again, and she ran desperate to the first direction she found safer, for she could only see the plane roof all around.

The droids were out in a few seconds, and Zarrain knew those were probably sent to catch her back no matter the cost, so she didn’t look back. Her feet burned in the concrete but she didn’t stop, at least until she saw, some miles away, some dry vegetation, and remembered immediately: the Dead Woods.

However, it was much farther than she could imagine, because the roof of the Sanitarium ended after some seconds, putting her face to face with an abyss at the corner of the building on the top of a mountain.

Zarrain stopped running by the edge of the roof. The droids were getting closer, she could see them with the corner of her eyes. Her heart beat so fast whenever she looked at how tall she was compared to the Dead Woods down there, making her gasp unstoppably, but there was nowhere else to run. She’d rather die than go back to the Sanitarium. With no time to think one last thing, Zarrain closed her eyes and jumped.

Gravity pulled her down in a cruel velocity, making her sure that she was taking her last breath. Still with her eyes closed, she clenched her fists involuntarily… And that was when everything went slow for a moment. Between two rushed beats of her heart, Zarrain opened her eyes to see herself reaching the brown ground of the mountain still in high speed, but she barely felt the first impact.

Like something had cushioned her fall. A strange… Force.

Anyway, it lasted only a second, because she only had time to blink before feeling her body slipping down the hill like none of that had ever happened, and it was so quick that she couldn’t even think until, after slipping and rolling like a stone, she ended up in plane ground again, but this time, in the middle of the Dead Woods. Her whole body shivered like never before, she felt pain here and there from the fall and had some scratches in her skin, but after looking up and seeing the Sanitarium far away, nothing could stop her from getting up and running inside the unliving forest.

In her first steps, Zarrain thought she wouldn’t make it far, because she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything properly in days, and the sun was burning in the sky above, making her thirsty in a matter of seconds. However, at every inch she ran, she felt like everything around was connecting with her being, distracting her from any noise that could possibly reach that place. Still running, Zarrain placed her hands in front of her, and as naturally as it’d always been, small stones floated slightly in the air, and the branches of the twisted dry trees moved without wind.

The Force was back to her. She was back.

Still feeling like in a sudden trance, just the same as she did as a little child, Zarrain found herself standing among the vegetation, but she knew she couldn’t stop now. She might have escaped the Sanitarium, but in a few moments high-qualified forces would be looking for her… She was thinking precisely about that when she heard some noises growing louder in the woods, scaring her to death that she hadn’t run fast enough.

That was when a blurred voice became clear. “…faster, we don’t have much time!”

The fastest she could, Zarrain turned around expecting to see the knights of the Empire or someone coming at their command, but what she saw were two men also running, one of them with a pale grey skin with dark stains in his face and small horns around his head, and the other had green skin with two long tale-like things in his head. She remembered some species she’d come to know while still in the palace, so she recognized a Zabrak and a Twi’lek, respectively. But that was not what caught her attention; the first thing she looked at were their hands, in which they held each one lightsaber hilt. The Zabrak’s was ignited and had a burning-red color.

“I’ve sent the emergency sign, a ship must be coming down in a second–” whatever the Twi’lek was saying, he stopped when he spotted Zarrain right in front of him.

The three of them stood still, looking at each other, gasping for air for how long they’d probably been running, but Zarrain was quick enough to look at their clothes – black with no sign of armor pieces – and verify, based on the fact that they were just talking about sending and emergency sign, that they were no knights. But they were holding lightsabers, apparently red ones, and mainly: both had yellow eyes. She knew what that meant; those two were Sith. The ever-lasting arch enemies of the Emperor.

And they had just said that a ship was coming for them.

Before Zarrain could even breathe properly, the Zabrak wielded his saber close to her, making her give a step back. “No!”

“We have no time for this, kill her before she makes more noise and reveals our position,” said the Twi’lek, and the Zabrak quickly came to Zarrain again with his red saber, making her fall aside a tree. Scared, she did the first thing that came to her mind, bringing down a tree between her and the Zabrak. He stopped and stared at her, shocked.

In a certain way, that was what Zarrain wanted.

Both Zabrak and Twi’lek kept on looking at her for a few seconds, and she had no idea what to say, so she just stood down on the floor until the Zabrak talked first. “Who are you?”

At the sound of those words, Zarrain was paralyzed.

Suddenly, then, something blocked the sun for a moment, and the three of them looked up quick enough to see a ship coming down a few yards away from where they were.

“Let’s go, they’re waiting for us at the dreadnaught!” said the Twi’lek, and the Zabrak still looked at Zarrain for some seconds, but turned around like his fellow, and that was when Zarrain screamed:

“Wait!” she did it so loudly that both Sith turned back to her, and she wasted no time. “Take me with you!” their reaction was confusion, of course, and the Twi’lek seemed impatient, because the ship had already landed and was opening its door. Zarrain then did the only thing she knew that might work: the fastest she could, she got up and put her right hand towards them, making more trees come down all around, shocking the two again. “Take me, please!”

Whatever she was saying and doing at that moment, even the way her power expressed so heavily, she knew it was a mere fruit of despair and fear, but that didn’t matter; if those Sith saw that she was somehow strong with the Force, they might take her with them in that ship, and wherever it was heading to didn’t matter either, since it was far away from Begeren, and it probably was.

Zarrain knew it was her only chance, so she kept on holding everything she could, until the Zabrak approached her, and at that point she knew he would whether kill her or take her. “Fine, come!”

She had no time to even listen to his two words, because he grabbed her arm tightly and pulled her with him towards the ship, since she’d stopped moving things by now. The Twi’lek seemed confused, but came along without a word, and when Zarrain noticed, the three of them were coming inside a dark metal ship that seemed a little bit damaged already, but Zarrain didn’t pay enough attention to see any detail except that. As soon as the door closed again, the ship took off, flying fast away from the ground and the Dead Woods.

There was a window close to the just-closed door, and Zarrain put her hand on it like she wanted to look closely. Through the glass, she saw the ground getting farther and farther away, and as the ship went higher in the air, she could see, far away, many other ships like that one falling down to ships that seemed to have a lighter color, and even among all that chaos, her eyes managed to spot the Sanitarium filled with smoke and a building far from it, that looked minimal from that height, but she knew it wasn’t: the palace, the biggest building in the whole planet.

When it disappeared from her eyesight, Zarrain finally realized: they were heading to that big ship, therefore, out of Begeren’s atmosphere.

She had made it.