Prisoner on Pallaxides

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

The darkness of unconsciousness began to subside. It slipped away like the tide retreating from the shore, leaving behind broken memories like flotsam and driftwood strewn on the wet sand.

Bryna opened her eyes to white light, brighter than a thousand suns. She screwed her eyes shut until the fire behind them began to subside. She moved to grind the heels of her palms into her eyes, but her arms were heavy and – bound? Daring to crack one eye open, she saw more white. White walls. White lights in the ceiling above and the walls to the side. White coats. White faces peering at her, features coming into focus as her eyes and mind adjusted.

"...do you understand me?

Look, I don't think she speaks Basic. We should get a protocol droid in here. The longer we wait-"

"I..." she croaked, and she tasted an unexpected, unpleasant copper tang on her lips. "Where.. am I?"

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

"You are on the planet Pallaxides."

A voice from behind Bryna replied to the girl's question. From her present bound state in the chair at the room's center, she could not discern who the voice belonged to. A woman's voice, but with a low gravel note to it.

The white in Bryna's vision began to subside into grey. Grey walls. Grey ceiling. Grey uniforms, the faces hidden by grey caps that cast grey shadow. The gradient then moved into moods of black. The black of her bindings. The black of the polished floor. The black of the floating sphere that hovered uncomfortably close to her chair. The white that remained was a luxury. The antiseptic cool illumination from the light bars above. The reflection of that sterile light against the hovering obsidian globe. The glint of a needle.

All at once, the men in grey around her exited the room through a grey door, their absence doing little to spoil Bryna's monochrome reality.

The voice spoke again. Even and calm.

"You are my guest."

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

Pallaxides... The name wasn't familiar, was it? Bryna tried to remember but her mind was as dark and shrouded as the Hallesmutt of Weit-Fällt. It was a struggle to even keep her yellow-gold eyes open, let alone remember the contents of the star-charts she'd poured over as a child. She blinked, trying to focus on the image of herself reflected in the back sphere hovering in sinister silence beside her. If she could see straight, perhaps she could see another figure reflected there too.

“Who are you?”

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Bare footfalls padded on the floor behind Bryna, until she could see her interrogator in the flesh. The Selonian giantess wore an armored cuirass emblazoned with the gear insignia of the Galactic Empire. It had seen better days, showing fresh wear of battle on it's patina.

"I am Matatek Sel Vissica, Knight to the throne of Empress Miranda Tarkin."

The ermine alien's dark eyes took in the sight of her prisoner with a cool dispassion.

"You have been detained under suspicion of murder, and the attempted murder of Her Majesty's royal court."

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

At the sight of the creature towering before her, the Lupine's eyes widened and her back flattened against the chair she was cuffed to as the scent of the big beast tickled her senses. Where had the Maid sent her - into whose paws had she been delivered? Her mind was a morass and Matatek's words may as well have been Wild Speech for all Bryna could grasp their weight and meaning.

“I don't understand. I have murdered no one!”

She wriggled, straining against her bonds.

“I am on a peaceful mission.”

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Vissica rumbled noncommittally at the prisoner's words, raising a fleshy eyebrow at Bryna's denial.

"So you say."

The Selonian pressed a finger against a small pad built into the interrogation frame, prompting a hologram emitter to flicker to life. Images of the grisly remains of the dead cascaded into the air in front of her.

"Thirty seven dead. Eleven injured. Two missing."

Vissica allowed the gore to remain in full view of her suspect.

"Pallaxides is a closed world. It is a private sanctuary of the Empress. The only beings permitted entry are her protectors, her inner circle, and her court. Curious then, that you should find yourself here. Your very presence is a serious crime."

A wave of the Knight's hand, and the images fell away into mist. Vissica pressed through the phantoms. She splayed a webbed paw along Bryna's jaw, pivoting her head so that the girl couldn't avert her eyes from her accuser.

"I will have the truth in you, whether you give it willingly or not." The Selonian's nostrils flared as she pressed close.

"Starting with your name."

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

The hologram was visceral. Images of unbridled destruction in... a place she did not recognise, but that she would not forgot any time soon. There were bodies everywhere. Limbs severed from their points of origin, tossed aside like the remains of a meal. What upset Bryna the most, however, were the memories of her father that the hologram had conjured. Father Van-Derveld as she had last seen him: clutching at the dark stain growing ever-larger on his chest, blood bubbling on his lips.

There was no time to dwell on it though, as the the creature suddenly seized Bryna by the jaw and forced their eyes to meet. All at once, each of her senses was overwhelmed. The bristle of Vissica's fur against her skin, the oppressive musk, their gazes locked -

"Bryna Van-Derveld."

The words exploded from her lips without a thought. Bryna gasped. It felt like Vissica had punched through the Lupine's ribcage and snatched the breath from her lungs.

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

The Selonian interrogator took in everything offered to her. The name of the woman meant little to her, for now. It was not a name she knew. However, truth had a way of attracting other truths to it. Bryna Van-Derveld's revulsion at the grisly handiwork was no indication of her absolution. Criminals often felt discomforted when they were confronted with their misdeeds. However, there was a feeling within, faint and indistinct. Lady Vissica felt a pain that went deeper than the rawness of Bryna's reaction.

"I feel the pain inside you. Share it with me."

Vissica's eyes half-lidded. Her hold upon Bryna was remarkably gentle, fingers gliding slowly up the jaw to the temple, as if she were trying to feel something faint just below her skin.

"Tell me about your mission."

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

There was tenderness in Vissica's touch, almost soothing, as if it had been Bronn stroking Bryna's cheek, not a stranger. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes. She didn't want to answer but couldn't stop herself.

“I must find my mother and return her to my father's side. She is dead but the Maid believes that her spirit lives on - that I can find her.”

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

What the girl spoke of was surely rubbish. Not even the Knight General himself was strong enough in the force to commune with those returned to dust, much less return the dead to life. The trouble with truth was that it was professed by people who could be undone by their own ignorance. It depended greatly on the truthsayer's perspective.

Vissica had no doubt that Bryna was telling her everything she asked, but even then, there were limits to discovery.

"You believe that the secret to finding your mother lies here?"

The Selonian raised a brow, momentarily lifting her hand from the young woman's face. Bryna was free to answer that question candidly.

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

The strange sensation of compulsion slipped away from Bryna's mind. A weight lifted from her chest, but she breathed no more easily for it.

"I... don't know. My father trusts the Maid's judgement. I am compelled to do the same."

Bryna swallowed and shook her head, trying to shake stray strands of hair from her face. She had to believe. To do otherwise would have been to question Father Van-Derveld, and to acknowledge that she had been sent... who knew where on a hopeless endeavour.

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

"Your father?"

Vissica paused in a moment of contemplation, scratching the tuft of fur at her chin. She turned from Bryna, taking a few paces away, before returning to summon another hologram for her prisoner's inspection.

"Tell me about this man."

The hologram flickered in space of a security camera capture from mere hours before.

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

The image depicted a man with flesh like ivory, frozen statuesque in time. He looked up from under the brim of a hat into the eye of the camera, as if meeting Bryna's gaze.

"I.. don't recognise him."

She pulled her attention back to the creature.

"He is not my father."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

The Knight raised a hand to Bryna, thinking of establishing the link once more. The clarity of emotion she felt from the suspect, however, gave her pause. She didn't need to push the truth on this matter. Bryna gave her own clarity.

Vissica lowered her hand, her whiskers drooping slightly.

"I believe you."

The Selonian's chest rumbled as she leaned in closer.

"And yet, you find yourself on this planet at the same time as this killer. Do you believe in coincidences, Bryna Van-Derveld?"

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

Bryna relaxed her shoulders, twisting her wrists in their bonds to find a more comfortable position to hold them in. As she did so, she though back to what she had glimpsed in the tear-in-time that the Maid had opened: flickers of other places, other people. Slivers of reality, scattered before them like the shattered shards of a mirror. The Maid claimed to have opened a door, but was it only one door she had opened? If so, had Bryna passed through the right one? At that thought, her mouth went dry and panic prickled like pins and needles over her skin.

"I don't know what to believe. All that I am certain of.. is that I am not a killer."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

The time had come for Bryna to demonstrate that truth.

"Perhaps you aren't. But one can be complicit in murder without doing the deed themselves. Murderers, after all, often require accomplices. I have no idea how this man arrived on Pallaxides."

Vissica raised a hand, but stopped short of placing it against Bryna's head again.

"Much as I have no idea how you arrived."

Only then did the Selonian once more splay fingers across Bryna's cheekbone and her temple.

"Now, tell me how you came to this place."

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

Though she knew it was coming, the urgency and pressure to speak that came with the Selonian's touch was no less startling. For the first time, however, Bryna tried to focus on doing something in response. A form of resistance, perhaps. Trying to gain some control over her urge to vomit words.

“Through a door,” she started, a frown twitching at her brow as she concentrated.

“The Maid opened it with blood magic – with the Force.”

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Vissica felt the resistance to her coercion. It was feeble, but present against her will - a minnow trying in vain to swim upstream. However, that very resistance spoke an unsaid truth in and of itself. The Force. Bryna Van-Derveld seemed to be aware of it beyond an academic sense. Her struggle against the Selonian's truthseeking was a natural response of a Force-attuned being.

The Selonian knight elicited a soft growl, holding fast onto Bryna's features. She spoke in metaphors. Of doors, blood magics, and maids. In time, Vissica would find the truth in these, but the truths from Bryna's point of view were becoming desultory. There were many ways in which the force was understood and commanded. One only had to look to the Jedi and the Sith to understand this. But others too. The Nightsisters of Dathomir commanded the force through physical mediums and invoked words. Vissica held no belief in such things, but a symbol could be imbued with a kind of truth in belief.

The means were immaterial. For now, Vissica wanted broader strokes. A concrete foundation to build upon.

"Where did you come from?"

[Bryna Van-Derveld]

For every millimetre of ground she gained in resistance, the Selonian shunted Bryna back a full five metres. It was a mental tug of war that she had no hope of winning, and yet a part of her couldn't help but try to maintain control. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the arms of her chair tighter.

"My home, Cathar."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

The obvious went unstated. You are not Cathar. It was not unheard of for expatriate populations of aliens to reside on otherwise homogeneous worlds, but the reasons for doing so usually ran deep.

Knight Vissica withdrew her touch, lowering her hand to her side as she paced.

"The door you speak of - the one that this maid opened through the Force..."

The Selonian turned away from Bryna, then pivoted her flexible spine to turn back nearly 180 degrees, a look of curiosity on her face.

"...a person steps through in one place, and exits another?"

It was supposition, but Vissica wanted to understand the prisoner's delusion. There was the laughably small chance it was literal truth, but the Selonian interrogator believed it was more likely that this only existed in Bryna's mind. That did not make such a thought exercise useless. Obviously Bryna believed what she was saying. Therefore, following the rules of this mental construct might very well lead to it's terminus, and it's intersection back into reality.