3952 BBY, The Polar Regions of Telos
Four years since Revan saved the Republic, two since she went missing
The Last Handmaiden
The mountain was cold.
Brianna expected nothing different, but it did not quell her unease upon its slopes. She followed in the footsteps of her sisters, who were blindly carrying out orders given by their mistress, Atris, earlier that morning.
I sense a presence on the mountain, she had said, eyes closed in concentration. Scout the area, bring back anyone you find.
She found her mistress's words worthy of note. Anyone she had said, not anything.
Atris had then resumed cradling her aching temples, brimming with visions, stooped over her chamber desk as Brianna and her sisters nodded and went on their way, Brianna in the rear as always.
She was otherwise known as the Last of the Handmaidens, last meaning the least of them, a fact her sisters reminded her of constantly. She deserved no name, not even the one she used to refer to herself in more intimate moments. Only her title was warranted, technically. In a way, Brianna lamented her Echani father's demise, and not for its untimely nature but for the fact that she would carry the burden of his actions until her dying breath. She would always be Brianna the Bastard. The Last of the Handmaidens.
A most unfavorable heirloom, indeed.
The bitter winds, the thick snowfall, and the harsh temperatures were unrelenting, and yet a part of Brianna felt right at home. Out here, she was met with just as much resistance as she would have had she stayed at the academy, and yet she found the wordless wind favorable to her sisters' insistent discontent. The fact that it drowned out anything they might say helped.
The wind tasted crisp on her tongue though cruel to her lips, rubbing them raw, and yet Brianna had never felt more alive, never more herself than out in a world that was not so controlled, so demanding, so defeating. Brianna bit her lip, quelling the secret smile she bore behind her sister's backs, unaware that any joy could be had in the life of a bastard.
Ahead of her was nothing but a sheet of snow, yet Brianna could somehow sense her sisters up ahead, like walking through a familiar hall in the dark, navigating from memory. She finally came upon them, stoic spires in the spiraling snow, their ivory hoods drawn over their heads as their necks pivoted, discerning their choice of direction with careful eyes.
"Where to?" Arianna asked, her voice a telltale singsong hardly a whisper on the wintry air.
Orenna only shrugged.
By default, Brianna stopped just before reaching them, never used to standing equal among her sisters, always to be an afterthought.
She looked about, holding up an white-gloved hand as a visor to block out the snow but to no avail, until… the snow stopped completely.
Her hand dropped to her side in surprise, and she looked between her sisters to gauge their reaction but they were as still as statues. The wind fell silent. It no longer rang in her expectant ears and instead stood stagnant, cold against her face. She exhaled. A plume of warm breath should have erupted from her lips, and yet the scene remained unchanged.
Words lingered on her tongue but shock stayed her. Her mouth opened and closed, a firaxa out of water. Then she felt it, or sensed it, more rather.
Just beyond the sheet of snow ahead of Arianna and Orenna the mountain sloped downward, and below the slope was an embankment where a figure lay motionless but still breathing - shallow breaths, dangerously shallow. Brianna could not see it, but she knew what was there.
She blinked, unbelieving, when the scene unfolded again before her, as if she had unpaused a holorecording and life resumed in real-time as always.
"We should head North," Orenna demanded, her voice low and even, her age always evident in the way she carried herself. The snow resumed falling, as if it had never stopped, and the wind howled about them once more. Neither of her sisters made note of the change.
Arianna considered her sister's command when Brianna heard herself say, "They're right there, just below us."
She could hardly register her own voice, and her sisters both turned to consider her for the first time that day. They had not even bothered looking at her when the Mistress had personally called the three of them down to her chambers that morning, only exchanging glances with one another as if Brianna were not there.
They were forced to acknowledge their sister's presence and heed her advice. Brianna almost expected that they would dismiss her proclamation, but the way Arianna and Orenna looked at one another told her different. Did they feel it, too?
The two sisters nodded without a word and descended into the nothingness of the snow.
For a moment, the figures of her sisters melted into the stark white backdrop of the scenery, almost as if the sky had swallowed them whole, mountain and all.
The scene did not speak to her this time, and the elements shielded her from whatever vision manifested in her mind moments before. Staggering in the snow, she searched for purchase, hoping that the feeling would return, but she was moving blindly now.
Brianna finally came upon Arianna and Orenna again, only this time they were moving towards her, huddled together, burdened by a figure clad in brown. The Last Handmaiden offered her hands in help, but her sisters ignored her and moved on without her assistance. She swore she saw Orenna shake her head, unsurprised that she could not keep up.
With her hands falling at her sides, Brianna followed her silent sisters, brimming with regret as she trekked back up the mountain to her uncertain refuge. Something in her stomach turned, and she knew it was not because of Orenna. Though her sisters denied her aid, her hands felt relief at the lack of weight in them as she ascended, and not for the ease of the return. No. Something about the figure Arianna and Orenna held between them did not sit well with her. Where did they come from? Why are they here? Did they know we would be here?
Part of her felt bad for not helping, knowing that this might come up again later as some other admonition added to a laundry list of faults her sisters harped on whenever they pleased. But another part of her knew that this was not over, that this meant more. Her skin prickled, and it was not with cold, but with the realization that this was bigger than she could possibly know. She did not know how, and that bothered her all the more.
Orenna and Arianna laid the figure to rest on the pristine seating area in Atris' study. The brown mass was a shocking contrast against the pale upholstery. Even the rough-hewn texture of the stranger's fabric clashed with the soft satin of Atris' lounge.
"Where did you find her?" Atris asked, hardly inflecting a question. Her voice was a husk whisper, echoing in the empty space between them.
"Just beneath the second pass, Mistress, about two hundred meters down," Arianna answered, Orenna nodding in affirmation. Brianna found herself nodding as well, though Atris' eyes never left the figure lying before her.
"Did she say anything?"
She?
"They… she didn't say anything at all, Mistress." Orenna replied. Both of her sisters' eyes were fixed on Atris, though Brianna found her gaze inexplicably drawn to the figure on the bed. Her breathing was low, shallow, and suddenly belonging to that of a person and not just a lump of rough, russet robes.
The feeling in her gut grew, gaining a mass that was empty and uncertain, and somehow the mysterious stranger both roused and calmed it. Her skin grew cold beneath her many layers, and her gloved hands reached up to wrap around herself despite the lack of winter wind in the academy's many halls.
Atris had not yet offered a reply. With careful fingers, she raised the figure's hood, only to let the fabric drop before revealing the stranger's face to the Echani watching on with eager eyes.
"Thank you," Atris said, her voice barely audible, "Leave me. You have done well."
Atris' gaze remained just above the dozing head of the stranger as Brianna filed out of the room behind her sisters, as if awaiting their leave to reveal the stranger's face. Why?
Brianna hesitated; eager to see what face lay beneath the hood. She and her sisters had traveled to remote corners of the galaxy searching for the artifacts that cluttered Atris' secret academy, but she doubted she would remember anyone they may have come upon. Mistress always warned them to stay hidden, never to speak, and to keep to themselves. Despite the unspoken fear that welled within her at the stranger's presence, her unexplained insecurity, she moved on and followed her sisters' retreating backs with a heavy pace.
The figure in the adjoining room did not sit well with her. Her presence troubled some inner part of consciousness that she could not reconcile. Whatever it was, it tugged at her like an invisible string, as if that woman's face would somehow mean something to her.
And yet the only face Brianna could fathom was the imagined visage of her bastard mother's, the one that resembled her own and resembled none of her sisters. But her mother had perished at Malachor, like so many others. And the Last Handmaiden did not believe in ghosts.
3952 BBY, The Polar Regions of Telos - Secret Academy Study
Atris
"No one wanders the mountain," Atris heard herself say in a severe tone that echoed through her study the moment the woman on the lounge stirred. Atris' mind raced with questions yet none of them arrived at her lips, eager only to leap to anger, to disbelief.
The woman only smiled. It was a wry smile that set Atris' skin on ice, prickled with the enduring sense that she could not control the visibly weak woman before her.
Or perhaps not as weak as you would like me to believe…
"They say you died at Katarr."
The stranger spoke through her smile, retaining its eerie shape beneath the shadow of her drawn hood as if her mouth were a crescent moon hanging in the blackness of night. Despite the state the Handmaidens found her in, the woman was not disoriented, not at all near death, and she looked as if she knew exactly where she was.
"They?" Atris spat, again unable to conjure a question, instead only capable of repeating words like a helpless creature, tamed to entertain guests. Her fingers itched to reach for the woman's hood once more, to reveal her cheap parlor tricks. She had peeled back her hood to reveal only nothingness, somehow, as if the Force had erased what she saw the moment she saw it. Now, the Force was silent; it only relayed radio silence when Atris tried to pry at the stranger's mind.
"Those who remain," the stranger answered, a corner of her mouth stretching further into the recesses of her shadowed visage.
What sort of devilry is this?
Atris sensed no inkling of the Force within the woman before her and yet she defied all of its laws. A Sith would have exuded negative energy, penetrated the world around them with bristling electricity, poisonous and bittersweet, but what this woman bore was even more unsettling. It was as if she was composed of nothingness and was entirely content with the fact. She was witchcraft, and Atris felt a hidden part of herself begin to fear this stranger's unknown composition.
"Why are you here?" Atris heard herself say, her voice laced with uneven hesitation.
"You know why I am here," the mysterious woman said, her voice grating and ancient, as if she were the embodiment of the living dead.
"You have a message for me," Atris said, without even thinking it first. It was as if she were an automaton, functioning at the whim of an unseen master, or perhaps it was the result of whatever sorcery the figure before her wielded. Atris' bones felt cold.
"I do," said the stranger, still sporting her smile, "I know what you did there, at Katarr."
She stated it as mere fact, there was no hypothesizing about it. She knew.
"You may not have anticipated the outcome, but you were successful nonetheless. The Jedi gathered, and the Sith threat manifested, revealing themselves. You were right."
Atris turned from the stranger, looking at the barrenness of her pale chamber. Her study was adorned in all white, but given the lighting of the aqueducts, everything was dim and cast in a dull, dark grey. Atris' icy blue eyes judged the shadows in the corner of the room, a smile creeping over her lips as she considered the thought. I was right. But she overcame the expression, dispelling it with a firm scowl despite her inner relief.
"There are Sith on the edges of space, and they swallowed Katarr whole-"
"I did not mean for them to die." Atris spat defiantly before the guilt could take root in her chest again, as it did so often since the conclave she was meant to attend.
"Of course you didn't," the stranger sympathized, her voice suddenly saccharine and sweet, almost sickeningly so, "But they are more powerful than the Jedi ever anticipated, despite your many warnings."
"But that is not your message."
The woman had taken to her feet, though Atris had not sensed it, and appeared at her shoulder, startling her.
"If you truly wish to draw out the Sith, to face their might, you must try again." The woman whispered in her ear, swiveling from Atris' left ear to her right.
Atris swung around to meet the stranger face to face to find her suddenly sitting in her chair on the other side of the room, leaning back quite comfortably, her head forward, keeping her face perfectly hidden from view, save for her wicked grin. Her eyes were veiled, but there was something so familiar about her mouth, the curve of her chin, her choice of words…
"I know your face," Atris whispered almost wistfully as a plague of goose bumps erupted over her skin as she approached the chair opposite her, now usurped by the stranger.
"Of course you do, Master Atris."
And while she spoke the truth, Atris was not sure how she knew that face, that smile, that crooked grin composed of malice and so full of unyielding intent. Her mind was clouded by the Force, as if a veil were held firmly in place, a veil she was not yet meant to lift. The woman's face remained shrouded, but her crooked, cragged mouth rang true with a piece of Atris' memory she could not retrieve. This is no Jedi trick, nor anything I know of the Sith.
Atris could not move. She was fixed to the spot before the woman in her chair. The stranger rapped her fingers on the armrests, like an impatient ruler seated atop a throne before an undeserving servant awaiting orders.
"What must I do?"
It took no thought at all. Atris' knees gave way in a slow descent, easing into a kneeling position before the all-too-familiar yet still unknown stranger, pulling her strings. Despite her loss of control she felt a warmth surround her, the all-encompassing hum of energy that the Force exuded at all times was now ten-fold, and suddenly Atris no longer cared to know who sat in her chair and what face she bore beneath her cowl. I was right, I was right, I was right.
"Seek out the one who wronged you, and you shall find your answer."
The stranger's smile dissolved and what was left beneath her hood was a cragged mass of wrinkled skin.
Atris bowed her head as the Force filled her with absolution. I was right, I was right, I was right…
"Release her records. The Sith will follow."
With her head still bowed, Atris nodded.
"And what then?"
"You will know, in time."
The figure stood. Atris remained kneeling, her head bowed, facing the floor with a sense of utmost pride, long awaited recognition, praise filling her every pore, absolving her of sin.
"I will send word. You will know of what I speak when it arrives. It should be seen by your eyes alone, Master."
Were Atris not utterly entranced by unknowable magic, she would have sensed the utter malice in the voice that assured her, the underlying falsehoods in the very notions that soothed her and filled her to calm capacity. The stranger put a gentle hand on the back of Atris' bowed head, a dark, wrinkled hand upon the pure white silk of Atris' hair.
For now, you will forget me.
The stranger left, leaving no traces in the physical realm and the slither of an idea in her memory - the faintest of fingerprints on the corners of her mind - and Atris awoke with a start.
