The Crater

Her hair hangs around her face in a tangled mess. Her shirt sticks to her back, still slick with sweat from her sprint down the mountainside. Purple slices of jorgan fruit sit untouched on the plate in her peripheral vision as she stares blankly down at the scuffed durasteel dining table.

"You just climbed a mountain, kid." Greez pushes the plate gently towards her. "You should eat something."

Anna shoots back a feeble smile. "Sorry, just a lot on my mind."

She picks up a slice and takes a small bite. Her stomach churns in protest. Her tongue tastes the fruit's sweetness, but it still feels like she's eating rubber. There's just too much going on in her brain for her to focus on the food.

Raising her gaze out the thin windows lining the cabin, she watches specks of snow drift down outside the glass. She sees a fireplace through the white and grey. This place was once her home. She had a family here: a father, a mother. A sister.

Elsa. The name echoes like a lyric to a long-forgotten song. It's so fitting, so familiar—yet as hard as she tries, she can't see her face. Why can't she remember anything?

It was the only way we could protect you.

The parting words of her father's specter echo hauntingly, as mysterious as ever.

"Anna? You alright?"

She startles at the sound of Cal's voice. Her hand is sticky. Looking down, she discovers she's crushed the remaining half of the jorgan slice between her fingers. Feeling heat rise in her cheeks, she hastily stuffs the half-pulped fruit in her mouth, wiping away the purple juice running down the back of her hand with a napkin.

The embarrassment only manages to distract her for an instant before different, more recent memories rise in her mind. The shattered temple. The obsidian dias. The inhuman fury in the monstrous golem's eyes.

"Cal, what did you see when you touched the pedestal?" she asks quietly.

The amusement in Cal's expression immediately disappears. The muscles of his jaw tense visibly.

"I saw… well, I'm not sure exactly what I saw. The sky was black. Everything was burning, so much smoke. There was this feeling—this feeling of total loss. It was like I was watching Master Topal die all over again, but laid over a completely different scene."

There is pain in Cal's eyes. He pauses before continuing in a quieter voice.

"The Force is strange here. There is power, like on Dathomir, but here it's different, broken but alive, somehow. When I touched that pedestal, it found me, and it did not like what it found."

Cal pauses, his eyebrows knitting in the middle.

"And that… snowman thing, I've never seen anything like that before. It felt like it was speaking straight into my head. One word, over and over again."

"Trespasser," Anna whispers. The hairs of the back of her neck stand up at the memory of the soundless voice.

"You heard it, too?" Cal's eyes widen.

She nods.

"Did you find what you came for, Anna?" Cere interrupts gently, leaning forward from the other side of the table. "Any more information on your father?"

Anna nods again, taking a deep breath.

"I had another vision. A memory, I think. My father was giving me a lesson, something about discovering my powers." The silver sword held between her father's hands flashes behind her eyes. She looks to Cal. "He was talking about tapping into the elements of nature, the ones represented by those runes. Was he… could he have been talking about the Force?"

Cal cups his chin thoughtfully.

"I've heard of Jedi that focused their connection to the Force to control the elements. Those were mostly in old stories from the archives, though. Master Topal never mentioned it."

"The Sith are known to use an electrical Force ability to torture their opponents," Cere adds. "The Force is a part of nature. Your people may have called it by a different name, but from what you just describe, it sounds like they were intimately familiar with it—though in a very different way from the Jedi."

"Like the Nightsisters were," Cal says in a lower voice.

"Yes. Whatever the case, it would certainly explain Darth Vader's involvement in your past." Cere grimaces at her own words, her expression pensive as she holds Anna's gaze. "Do you remember anything else?"

Anna plays through the scene again in her head. Realization hits her like a train, her eyes going wide as moons as she barks out a dazed laugh. Cere's eyebrows raise.

"My father… my father was the king!" Anna exclaims. "I'm a princess."

The truth is wilder than she ever dared dream. Her, a princess! Thirteen years of people treating her like scum on their boots, when she was royalty all along. She fights back the urge to punch the air.

The excitement in Cere's eyes reflects her own.

"Anna, this could be huge. If your memories are right, the Empire openly attacked your father's kingdom. If there are any still loyal to him, they could be our allies in this war. We have to find the rest of your people."

"Whatever's left of them," Greez mumbles in a low voice. Anna ignores him.

"The ruins," she says quickly. "My father mentioned them in my vision. He called it the Temple of Ice, said someone named Mattias was going to take me there. That means wherever I was in the vision couldn't have been far from this mountain." She shoots a glance at Greez. "Can we take the Mantis?"

"If you want, kid. Was getting bored sitting down here, anyway," Greez replies with a yawn, popping another slice of fruit into his mouth and rising from the table. "Let's go do a little scouting."

Anna follows Greez into the cockpit, blood still pounding in her ears. Arriving at the bow, she leans with her palms on the dashboard as Cal takes a seat in the copilot's chair beside her. BD-1 chirps a greeting by her hand, but for once the sight of the little droid isn't enough to ease the tension in her shoulders. The thrusters kick up a cloud of powdered snow outside the windows as the engines whine to life with a few switch-flicks under Greez's fingers. Her stomach drops from the sensation of acceleration, the mountain shrinking rapidly below them as the captain eases the yacht upward into the overcast sky. Just before they hit the clouds, he pitches the ship over into a gently-curving path toward the mountain peak.

"Holler if you spot anything, kid."

"It just doesn't make any sense," Cal mutters, a deep furrow forming between his eyebrows as he leans forward over the dashboard. "How does the princess of a secluded kingdom end up on the streets in the Outer Rim?"

Anna frowns. He has a point. Surely, someone would have tried to find her during all these years? As she watches the mountain peak drift by, a faint sense of dread begins to tickle the back of her mind.

The ruins of the Temple of Ice jut from the steep mountain slope, the full extent of the damage from the meteor clearly visible from this altitude. Despite the light pitter-patter of snow on the cockpit glass, the air is crystal-clear all the way to the ground. The sight of the broken spire cuts straight to her heart, its haunting beauty stirring that same mysterious sorrow that caught her attention when the Mantis first arrived here.

In that moment, something clicks.

"I know where I have to go," she breathes.

"What was that?" Greez asks, but she ignores him, her breathing quickening as her heart begins to race.

Drawn by a strange pull, her eyes trace a path down the mountain, flitting across crumbling fields of rock toward the crater. She can see it in its entirety from this height—a perfect bowl of fractured bedrock hugging the edge of the mountain range. Veins of glassy black spread out from the center of the crater in jagged radial paths, as if the planet's very crust has been injected with poison. As her eyes drift to the far lip of the crater, shapes begin to resolve from the chaotic sea of rubble. Familiar shapes.

Inklings and outlines flash over her vision—dense city streets framed by a jungle of buildings and skyscrapers, coupled with a faint sense of déjà vu. She blinks and the images are gone, leaving only debris and dust.

Then she sees it—another set of ruins sprawled over the farthest lip of the crater, much larger than the mountain temple, glimmering with hints of metallic gold in the feeble late-afternoon light. Her gaze traces along the vast arc of a castle wall, now nothing more than low mounds of stone and twisted metal. A low pressure pushes at her temples in sync with the hollow nostalgia that flares in her chest at the sight.

The royal castle. It has to be. This is the place from her dreams.

"There, over there!" she exclaims, grabbing Greez's elbow.

The captain pulls back his arm with a glare.

"Hey, not when I'm flying, kid!"

He follows Anna's finger with squinted eyes.

"Yeah, I see it. You really got a hankering for these ruins, huh? Alright, go sit yourself down, I'll bring her in."

Anna backs up in teetering steps as the Mantis dips into a shallow dive, her eyes never leaving the cockpit window as she eases herself down on her usual spot on the bench by the kitchenette.

"Hold on, the transceiver is picking up something, a short-range broadcast," Cere announces abruptly. She sounds surprised. "Protocols are old, Republic-era."

The holoprojector on the dashboard flickers to life. For a few seconds, the image is blank. Then a voice sounds, garbled and unintelligible.

"Is it a message?" Cal asks, leaning his ear closer to the projector.

A hologram appears—the vague shape of a man's face, distorted with corrupted rectangular artifacts. The mouth moves in time to the noise.

The pressure in Anna's head intensifies and suddenly the sounds form meaning.

"... not an option. The guardians have fallen. This is our last stand. Ahtohallan protect us."

The image bursts into formless static and the message starts to play again from the beginning. Anna's eyes are riveted to the holoprojector, waiting for the face to reappear, watching the pixelated mouth enunciate those same terrible words.

"Anna?"

Anna tears her gaze from the projection to find Cere regarding her with an eyebrow raised. Cal has turned from the dashboard with a matching look of confusion.

"You can understand it, can't you?" Cere says in a low voice. It doesn't sound like a question.

The realization sets in. They can't understand the message, but she can. The dread rises.

"It's a prayer," she says simply.

The pitch of the engines shifts as the Mantis begins to slow. BD-1 lets out a low trill, taking in the scene below with a slow sweep of his head.

The ruins lay before them, teetering on the crater's jagged border, golden towers and parapets of mirror-smooth stone lying in scattered shards over the blackened bedrock like shattered pieces of an enormous vase.

Anna pushes herself off the bench, throwing her tattered cloak over her shoulders. Greez is gonna kill her for getting up during the landing sequence, but she just needs to get moving. The floor shudders as the landing gear extends, listing to one side as the yacht touches down on uneven terrain. The dread has grown into a black hole that threatens to swallow her hole from the inside out, but she forces it down with clenched teeth.

"Anna, wait up!" The sound of unclasping seatbelts is followed by the familiar jangle of a holstered lightsaber approaching from behind her. "I'm coming with you."

She nods without turning. Dashing to the exit, she punches the button to extend the ramp with a trembling fist, shielding her face from the inevitable blast of snow. Clenching her fingers to brace against the cold, she strides out into the frozen wasteland.

The ship is landed just off the jagged lip of the crater opposite the now-distant mountain. Anna's eyes flit across the landscape, taking in crumbled stone and liquified metal before she raises her gaze farther out toward the center of the ruins. The castle must have been a magnificent sight when it stood; now only the lowest of the outer walls remain intact, the rest of the structure forming a mound of gold-veined rubble so high it spills well over them in a trail of glittering debris.

She makes for the base of the ruins with a growing sense of urgency. Black, crystalline sand crunches under her boots. This place is familiar. This place is wrong. The strange pressure presses harder on her temples with each step. The sand beneath her feet transitions to crumbling cobblestone, jutting from the ground in haphazard slabs that threaten to twist her ankles out from under her. As she clambers over a low mound of rubble, her hand brushes aside the thin layer of snow, revealing the symbol of a three-petaled flower etched into the surface of the dark stone in delicate grooves. Her heart skips a beat.

The Crocus. Her dreams are real. It's all real.

The wind picks up, howling over the sharp edges of the ruins surrounding her and cutting through the tears in her cloak. The sound is almost like blaster bolts in flight. Almost like screams of terror. She slows as she approaches the collapsed outer wall of the castle, hugging herself tightly against more than just the cold.

"Anna, are you okay?" a gentle voice calls from behind.

She'd almost forgotten Cal is here, too. Turning, she finds him standing a few paces back, his eyes radiating concern as they swap rapidly between her and the ruins towering over them both. Her mouth opens and closes as she tries to find the right words.

"I… I need to keep going. The answers are here."

"The answers to what?" There's a hint of exasperation in Cal's tone. A hint of nervousness.

"My past. My memories. Everything."

"I feel something, and it's not a good feeling." Cal purses his lips tightly. Anna watches his hand edge toward the weapon at his hip. "The Force is wrong here."

"Please, Cal." Anna looks at him desperately. "I have to do this."

Cal holds her gaze for a long moment. Finally, he sighs.

"Fine. Just… be careful."

"Thank you," Anna says in relief.

She turns to look back at the ruins. The déjà vu is so powerful it's unsettling. Then something shifts. Abruptly, there's a direction to the familiarity, an intense sense of a destination.

Her eyes lock to a spot at the base of the mound of rubble. She needs to get there. There's never been anything else more important in her life. A tiny voice screams that this isn't normal, that this premonition is bordering on insanity—but the voice is weak, drowned out a hundred times over by an overwhelming sense of purpose.

"Anna! Where are you going?"

She's running now, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she navigates the broken cobbles in reckless bounds. The pressure in her head is unbearable but still it grows, pressing in harder with every breath she takes. Her head is going to split in half.

Her foot catches something in the rubble and she sprawls forward, cold pain searing along her palm as her hand strikes a sharp edge. She lets out a yelp, scrambling to her knees and clutching her injured hand.

"Anna!"

Cal is at her side in an instant, landing in front of her with a gust of wind and dust. Her eyes are fixed on the weeping gash along her palm. With effort she focuses on the ground, finding the snow stained with flecks of red.

Then she sees the glove.

It's draped just above a crevasse in the cobbles a few steps in front of her, right at the base of the crumbled boundary to the castle proper—a piece of plain grey leather, cracked and discoloured from exposure to the elements. Her vision darkens at the edges until she's looking through a long tunnel. She can barely lift her head now, the weight is so heavy, but she has to reach it, so she crawls toward it, heedless of her still-bleeding hand.

The cobblestones rumble beneath her.

"Anna, no! Don't touch that!"

Cal's voice is so far away, so easy to ignore. She's so close. She just needs to reach forward. Her fingers brush the flaking leather.

There's a hand in the glove.

Her head finally bursts.

"They've breached the outer perimeter, Your Majesty!"

She's on the floor. Everything hurts. A woman is shouting orders, her voice shrill but steady. The voice is familiar.

"You two, secure the entrance. The rest, to me!"

It's Mama's voice.

"Take my hand, Your Highness!"

A white leather glove appears in front of her face. She looks up. The man is smiling through the slots in his visor, crow's feet crinkling the corners of his eyes. She reaches up to take the hand.

An explosion. Splinters of wood shower down on her. It feels like the time she stood too close to the oven when the cook was taking out the flatbread. Searing bolts fly through the air above her head. There's a grunt of pain and the guard falls to the floor beside her. There's smoke rising off his chest. Something smells like it's burning.

She doesn't realize she's still holding on to the man's hand until she's yanked away. Strong arms scoop her up and sling her onto a soft shoulder. Another shot screams out of the smoke, exploding on a nearby wall, searing her eyes with its brightness. She holds on tightly to Mama, wanting desperately for all this to be a bad dream.

Be brave. She has to be brave. It's hard to keep the tears in through the screaming, the explosions, the glimpses of the dead and dying—but it's the last thing Papa said to her, so that is what she must do.

She clutches hard to Mama's shoulders, trying to keep her attention on the pretty patterns in her scarf. There's so much fire everywhere. She knows how dangerous fire can be. The air is sour and sharp, every breath tasting like burnt grass. She coughs and coughs, but that only makes the pain worse, so she buries her face in the scarf instead. It smells like safety and colourful flowers. If she scrunches her eyes shut she can almost imagine she's having lunch in the castle garden.

Another flash of light sears her eyes through her eyelids. Terrible noise, slamming into her like a physical force. She cries out, but she can't hear her own voice. Rubble rains down on her cheeks, the wind from the blast touseling her hair.

She opens her eyes and they blur with tears. She's not in the garden.

Familiar voices cut through the ringing in her ears.

"... Your Majesty! We'll cover you!"

More guards in plated armour like snake scales rush to take up positions around her, blocking the hallway with solid walls of white light that spread out from their shields. She sees one of the men's faces through his slotted helmet as he runs by.

"Derek, no, come with us!" she wails.

Derek turns and flashes a grin that doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"Oh, don't you worry, Princess. You aren't getting rid of me that easily."

Bolts of red strike the barrier, sending ripples through the force field. There are soldiers with white, frowning helmets on the other side, helmets that don't show their eyes. Those are the bad soldiers.

"For Arendelle!"

The guards raise their spears and level them over their shields, sending lances of crackling green flying at the invaders. Then they're gone, blocked from view by wall after wall as she's carried away.

"Mama, where are we going?"

A gentle hand strokes her hair.

"Shh, Anna, it'll be okay, it'll be okay…"

She tries to ignore how Mama's voice is shaking. Mama is always brave. She has to be brave, too. For Papa. For Elsa.

"Mama, where's Elsa?" she whimpers.

"With Papa, dear. They… they'll join us soon."

The thought of Elsa in the courtyard surrounded by dead friends and bad soldiers is too much. She begins to sob, tears running down her cheeks and soaking into the scarf. She wipes her running nose on Mama's shoulder and immediately regrets it. This is Mama's nice scarf—she isn't supposed to get it dirty.

A door slams open. They're outside again. The smoke is thin enough here that she can see a sliver of the stars. Looking around, she recognizes this as the Secret Exit—the same route she always takes when playing hide-and-seek with Elsa. Elsa knows about it now, though, so Elsa will be able to find it. Elsa never forgets anything. She feels a bit better at the thought.

One more set of doors and they're outside the castle completely. It's not just the castle that's on fire, though; she can see the city burning over the thin bridge across the water, tongues of fire licking up the buildings, belching columns of thick black smoke. Even the clouds in the sky are black.

She's only able to see the city because Mama is carrying her away from it. The ground beneath them goes from paved stone to grass and dirt. Soon, the view is blocked by the dark silhouettes of trees.

Mama keeps running.

"Where are we going, Mama?" she asks.

The fingers return to stroke through her hair.

"Away, far away, my sunflower." Mama's voice hitches. "Somewhere where they won't be able to hurt you."

The forest seems the same in every direction. She jumps at every shadow. Every once in a while a boom sounds in the distance loud enough for her to reach her ears. She trembles.

Mama keeps running for a long, long time. The scarf soaks through with sweat.

The sky has begun to lighten by the time she hears the footsteps. She feels the arms holding her tighten their grip.

"Queen Iduna." The voice is low and coarse. "Was beginning to think you weren't gonna make it." There's a pause. "Weren't there supposed to be two?"

"There's no time, we have to hurry," Mama rasps, her breathing fast and laboured.

"Not so fast. Credits first."

The arms holding her drop her gently to the ground. She teeters on unsteady legs, turning to look at the man talking to Mama—only to shrink back, clinging to Mama's legs at the sight of the walking fish-monster in front of her. The thing sneers down at her as Mama taps buttons on her wrist display.

"There. That's half the royal treasury."

The fish-person nods with a huff, turning and walking off into the trees. She wants to run the other way, but Mama won't let her, instead tugging her along by the hand as she follows after the monster.

"Mama, who is that?" she squeaks in panic, stumbling over roots and fallen branches.

"He's here to help us, Anna."

Is Mama crying?

They come to a clearing in the forest. In front of them is a boxy vehicle that looks like the sky-boats the people use in the city, only bigger and much less pretty. The circular door on the twists open as they approach. The fish-man turns around, staring at her with his huge black eyes.

"Come on, princess," he grunts.

She looks up, her heart pounding as her chest tightens, making it hard to breathe.

"Mama, what does he mean?"

She feels gentle hands cup her cheeks as Mama crouches down in front of her.

"Oh, Anna…"

Mama is crying for real now, the tears falling like tiny streams from her eyes. Slowly, the fingers move up and press gently into her temples. Something's wrong. Why is Mama crying? She grabs onto Mama's wrist with both her hands as the sniffles start in her own throat.

"Mama, what's happening?"

"Shh, shh…"

For an instant, she swears Mama's hands start glowing green—then, confusion. Suddenly, she can't remember why she's so worried. She tries to trace back her thoughts, to focus on the moment, but nothing makes sense.

"You are Arendelle's only hope now, sunflower."

She feels a gentle kiss on her forehead through the fog. Why can't she concentrate? She starts to panic again—but she can't concentrate on the panic, either. She's so, so tired. She just wants to sleep. The hands leave her head and she feels herself collapse. She's lifted off her feet and cradled by different arms. Unfamiliar arms.

"Please, take care of her."

"I'll do my darnedest."

The sound of a door closing. Darkness. Harnesses being strapped over her body. A stained, scratched window. A loud humming noise.

The ground drops away.

Morning light peeks over the horizon beneath black clouds. The sky is red. Too red. A beam of light brighter than the sun pierces through the clouds, striking the center of the fjord. Then the ground becomes the sun.

The darkness takes her.

She's on the ground. Sharp chunks of rock dig into her from below, the pain jolting her to awakeness. Her hand stings.

There's a hum resonating through the still air. She opens her eyes to find a redheaded man staring at her with an uncertain expression, leveling a blade of green plasma between them. Pieces of rubble hover off the ground near his feet.

Pieces of rubble are hovering off the ground all around her.

Clarity rushes back like a torrent of freezing water, leaving Anna gasping for breath. The rocks drop out of the air in a rumbling hail.

She remembers now. She remembers everything. She sinks to her knees as her chest tightens, choking out a thick, heaving sob. Dimly, she hears the lightsaber extinguish.

"Anna? Anna, talk to me."

Footsteps rush toward her across the rubble, but she doesn't have the strength to look up.

She's imagined coming home a million different times. In her most self-indulgent fantasies, there's a family waiting for her at the door, welcoming her with open arms. In her darker dreams, there's someone with a sneer and a blaster pistol.

This is so much worse than anything she could have imagined.

Lunging forward, she grabs onto Cal like a drowning person to a lifeboat, burying her face in his neck as she lets out a hoarse cry. His skin smells of sweat and grease, but she only holds on tighter as uncontrollable sobs wrack her body. He freezes for an instant, then his arms are around her too, his calloused fingers hesitantly moving to stroke her hair.

"Anna, you're scaring me. What happened?"

It's hard to force words through her spasming throat, but she does.

"They're dead, Cal. They're all dead."