章 2: I Became A Slave?
'I feel so peaceful. So this is how death feels? Ironically it feels so much better than life did for the past 7 years.' After killing myself, I woke up in a strange place, seemingly void of any and all light, and feeling at peace with myself, like everything with Kaden had all just been a very bad nightmare.
'I wonder where I am?' looking around the best I could, I couldn't see a single thing in sight, which would be eerie if not for the complete peace I felt. But alas, that was not to be. After being in peace for a minute or two, I felt a pull. It started gentle but increasingly got stronger as if I was being pulled closer to something by gravity. After getting to a point of feeling I was being pulled much faster than should be possible, I started seeing things; images of people, places, and various different races of aliens I couldn't piece together until I saw three specific races, a giant slug looking creature, a green person with two tails coming out of their head, and a small green creature with a glowing blade. Seeing these races, a kind of realization hit, and I could safely assume these were all images from Star Wars, a movie series I had watched together with Caroline.
A further realization led me to see several images from very different points in time right next to each other as if I was being shown the past, present, and future all at once. The reason is something I am unsure of, but after what seemed like both years and seconds of seeing these images and being pulled extremely hard towards a single direction, all of the images, and what I could only describe as a blue-hued gas, rushed straight at me, soon touching and being absorbed into my very being.
The pain that followed would have knocked me out or killed me if I wasn't incapable of doing either, so all I could do was suffer this excruciating pain. A short while later, the pain stopped, the pulling stopped, and I sharply opened my eyes, taking a deep, quivering breath several times over in an attempt to understand what just happened and why it happened. What I failed to realize until calming down for 5 minutes was that I was no longer in the void, with the pain fresh in my mind and with the deep feelings of hatred and sorrow leftover from Caroline's death crashing back into my head and heart, shattering my heart and almost doing the same to my mind.
Shooting up into a sitting position, I did my best to scan the area around me, as to understand what was happening and if I was in any danger, but I soon faltered as I saw in the distance what I can only describe as 2 big bipedal bugs with a spear/gun thing playing with cards I couldn't read. To make matters worse, around me there were several cages filled with families that were wearing what I generously assume are rags for slaves. Putting together the guards, bars, chains, malnourishment of the people I see, and the rags they're wearing, the assumption they were slaves seems the only likely answer. The problem here isn't the slavery, but it's the fact that I am in the same state as everyone else. Looking at my hands, being children's hands and practically just skin and bones, I had rags matching those of my cellmates and chains keeping me detained inside the bars.
After trying my best to calm down from this seemingly impossible situation, I noticed that there weren't just humans and those bipedal bug monsters, but there were some other races as well. Some kids had a crown of thorns, others had big horns coming out of their heads in different ways, and they were all multicolored in comparison to each other. In my cell are a light purple-skinned girl, a girl with a gentle red skin tone, and a normal-looking boy, if you ignored the crown of thorns on his head. With me being a human boy (thank god I didn't lose junior) our cell had two boys and two girls of varying races without any adults. After looking around again, I realized that all of the cells were void of adults, seemingly kept away from us.
That second scan was what cemented a fact I didn't think I would have to stomach, and that was that I was in the Star Wars universe. How could I tell? Firstly, the Zabrak boy in my cell resembled Darth Maul, if not for the different skin color. Secondly, in three different cells sat a total of 4 Twi'Lek, all of different colors and with their twin head tails going down their barely covered backs. And finally, with further inspection, I recognized the two bipedal bug monsters as Toydarians, which was the race of the person who enslaved Anakin and his mother, and they looked uglier in real life than in the movies.
"Hey, you shouldn't do that. The guards will hit you if you do." The purple-skinned girl whispered to me because in my realization of being in the Star Wars universe I stopped looking around and was staring at the guards, which to the others seemed to look like I was glaring at them. Used to taking orders from my superiors, I quickly looked away before they could notice my stare and looked back to the girl who saved me from myself. I almost failed to reply from the stunning sight in front of me, because despite being so young there was something about her, it screamed the perfection of beauty only seen in dreams.
"...Right, thanks. Who are you?" Deciding I should forget about the whole transmigrating situation and ignore the abnormal beauty this girl held, for now, I had to get a stable basis of where I am, what's happening, and potentially how to get away from this slavery ordeal.
"The name's Callista. I'm a Keshiri if you're wondering. Who are you?" Her inquisitive nature had her attention drawn to me as soon as I shot up into a sitting position, and my strange behavior only made it stronger.
"I'm…" Without knowing why, my name became blurry before I could respond, changing into something different. "I'm Aaron. And I'm a human, I believe." Showing some confusion through the whole sentence, I ended up piquing the other two kid's curiosity as well, inciting two more introductions.
"Well that's strange, shouldn't you know your name and race by heart?" The red-skinned girl was fascinated by the ignorance of my own personal details, so she jumped into the conversation before Callista could continue. "Either way, it matters very little to me. The name's Dahlia, and I'm a Zeltron." To her left came the Zabrak boy, joining the now circular formation we had going, to go along with our introductions.
"I'm Ajax, but you can just call me AJ. I'm a Zabrak." Holding his hand out for a handshake, I gladly partook in the familiar gesture. As little as I trust my current situation, these people are currently my only way to gather and understand the information around me, and that includes the possibility of escaping. From what I remember, there was a device that stopped Anakin's mother from escaping, and there was no way of knowing if that was inside me or not so my best bet is to gather all of the information I can while I lay low.
"You alright? You seem to be spacing out a lot." Showing genuine concern, Callista got closer than necessary to dig out a truthful answer in case I decided I should give a different answer than the truth.
"Yeah, I'm alright. Just thinking, that's all." Her genuine concern made me wonder if she really was just a child in slavery or not since the only slave thing about her was her attire. And boy am I glad we were both so young with other people around, otherwise, I wouldn't last very long.
"Well now that we got introductions out of the way, what should we do?" Dahlia put her finger to her lip and slightly tilted her head, trying to brainstorm ideas for things to do. It was the cutest thing I've seen since baby puppies.
"Nothing. The guards could get suspicious and the disappearance of a slave child or 4 wouldn't make a difference with the size of this colony." AJ spoke with conviction as if he already knew how it would go if we did anything, but his words about the colony interested me.
"Colony? Do you know where we are?" There was probably no use in having so much hope for a child's information, but my voice couldn't seem to hold it back.
"Um, not really? I don't know the planet name or where on the planet we are, all I know is that there are more than enough slaves in a place this big to allow the disappearance of several slaves to be ignored." AJ seemed to have been racking his brain for a suitable answer before answering, though his answer dampened my mood just enough to be barely noticeable, which wasn't missed by Callista.
"Hey, there's no point worrying about it right now. How long has each of you been a slave? I think I've been one about 7 years." Callista's answer shocked me and saddened me quite a bit to know that a child had to survive in this environment from such a young age.
"I'd say about 5 years for me, though I'm not sure." Dahlia had that confused look on her face that screamed cute while AJ seemed to have little care for the time he's spent here as he just shrugged off the question. "How about you Aaron?" Curiosity supposedly killed the cat, but that saying seemed to hold no meaning to Dahlia.
"I -"
"ATTENTION!" A loud yell interrupted my sentence, and I was extremely grateful for about 4 seconds before I realized a line of Toydarian soldiers set up outside the door leading to what I assume was the rest of the slaveholding facilities. Then they proceeded to march into our holding facility, lining up along the bars in a waiting position for who I assumed to be their commanding officer of sorts.
Walking into the cell of lined up soldiers and chained up slave children was a man covered in a robe of the darkest black I've ever seen outside the void, with what little skin he left showing was wrinkled with age so old I thought he could drop dead any moment. That's when I noticed something off, I could feel him; not physically, but if I closed my eyes I would still feel what direction he was in. This being so new, I was almost too surprised to notice the metal rod hanging from the inside of his robe after it fluttered a bit with his step as he faltered near my cell. That was a lightsaber, and from the situation around me, I can only assume that it was not a Jedi.
Once he faltered around my cell, he looked into it and scanned the room, as if searching for something that wasn't there. His eyes, deep and bloodshot, flew over each of us, and when it was my turn I had shivers run down my spine as I felt like I was being dissected, without the pain, while being fully awake; then just as fast as he looked our way, he continued to the end of the cellblock for his previous business. 20 minutes of almost pure silence, breathing was the only collective noise to be heard outside of the mystery sith's (?) footsteps. Finally, with his departure, and consequently the troops that accompanied him, noise broke out in silent chatter that the Toydarian partook in at their table.
"Hey, Aaron, did you feel that?" Callista seemed shaken, and when looking at the other two they seemed to have felt it as well. Nodding my head, it allowed Callista to continue without real words from me. "What do you think that was? And do you think that guy may be the reason behind that feeling?" Her intuition seemed to be extremely keen, but what would that mean for me if she feels something off about me?
"Yeah, let's just hope we never have to face him again." That man was dangerous, even without the lightsaber I could feel it, so hope has it that he never becomes an adversary I need to face. Hope wouldn't be something bad to have in this situation, right?
*Somewhere else, at an unknown location*
Sitting in a circle at a table were the holograms of 12 people in similar hoods to the man physically in the room, making 13 individuals in total. Each person had a number over their chair, with the guy in the room being dubbed 13.
"Did you find out the cause of the disturbance?" 3 asked number 13, with clear, undisguised contempt in his voice.
"There was nothing out of the ordinary, but I could feel it. Something big happened there, if the force was still present for so long then it's something we must look into." 13 ignored the contempt and gave his report, showing precedence for approval to go forward. With 3 looking towards 1, the latter decided quickly, so quickly that it seemed it was a predetermined answer.
"No, you are to go forward as planned, and you are to not pursue this." With a semblance of uncaring and authority, 1 gave his answer to 13 without any emotions showing in his figure or voice. 13, on the other hand, wasn't as unaffected.
"But this is big, 1; this is something that could change the very fabric of -"
"I said no. That. Is. Final. Victoria Aut Morte." His words should have been just a small threat, except with each word, 13 felt a pressure forming around him, pushing him down strong enough to where he needed to use all of his strength just to stand. And as soon as he finished his words all of the holograms shut off, the pressure lifted, and it was just 13 left. And he was angry, to say the least.
"DAMMIT!" Slamming his fists onto the extremely sturdy, stone table, it splintered and fell apart. With the table crumbling to his feet, 13 was panting with his hood fallen off, showing two horns growing out of his eyebrows wrapping around his head to make a crown of thorns, but each tip was chipped off, like what you would do to cat or dog claws after they scratch up a photo of your dead grandparents. "If they don't want to help me then fine! I'll just have to do it myself." And with his departure, the now broken table was all that was left in the dark, quiet room as a menacing cloud slowly grew in the sky where Aaron and the rest were in their cell, unaware of the storm about to change the very being of the universe.
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