Chapter 41: 41. Chapter

After listening to Equ's intricate descriptions of the castle's inner workings for about half an hour, I had to excuse myself to go and tend to the needs of my queen. While I was walking through the intricate corridors of the castle, I was thinking. Honestly, living in the castle, if you were willing to serve and work, wasn't a bad life. This fact was only completely missed by the types of blind fools like your average jedi were. Slavery has its uses. There are some good points and bad points to it. So where am I standing on this question exactly? I would think, that my actions to try and free those poor twi'leks from the slaver pirates back when I had spent a nice weekend with the Ohnaka gang would suffice as an answer.

Realizing, and understanding the facts, that a well-established system has good and bad points is not equivalent to agreeing with each of those points. Slavery can be good, if you are lucky to have a somewhat reasonable owner, and it would be living hell, if you were owned by some type of psychopath. And also, the Republic; the so-called cultured worlds are just as dependent on slavery as this one is. It is only a different kind of slavery. Have you ever thought about what a slave truly is? Believe me, I had the pleasure to do, in the last two weeks. A slave is someone who is forced to do something; anything that he or she normally wouldn't want to do, because his or her life directly depends on it. Now, is this familiar to you? Do you fit into that description? Most of us do, how many people work in a place around the galaxy that they hate, because they must. Otherwise they would go hungry; their family would go hungry... Now you see, it is just a different level of slavery with the illusion of choice. One that is not as honest about its nature as this one. Also, the rewards are mostly paid in credits and not favors.

So why did I pledge my loyalty to the queen, who fell into the marginally reasonable and somewhat psychopathic category?

Come on, did you really think that I would give a shit about that ridiculous pledge? I was hard pressed to not laugh in her face while I uttered those stupid words. If she takes off my collar, I will stay for a few more weeks to make her believe that I am true to my words, than I will get the fuck out of this planet when she least expects it. But, if she actually gives me freedom and property, which I highly doubt. Yet, if that, however unlikely may happen, I will begin to build a new secret temple, or if not a genuine temple, but at least a secret base for the order here. You have to be open-minded to those force given opportunities. Also, we didn't build a new base or temple for a very long time. I would be so badass if I actually manage to pull this off.

I was happily walking towards the throne room, as it was my time to change the other handmaiden. The moment I walked into the large and very beautiful throne room, I felt a sudden premonition through the force, and my easygoing mood immediately turned sour.
I walked on front of my queen, while the other handmaiden seeing me began to hastily escape the room, with her imaginable tail between her legs. Yet, even that wasn't enough to bring back the smile to my face right now. I greeted the queen while bowing moderately, while slightly raising the front of my long skirt as it was thought to me to do. In the inside of the palace. I wasn't wearing the long cloak, only when I was ordered to do so, for some ceremonial purposes. Therefore, I was simply wearing my usual white and green outfit. That was basically the sign of the fact that I was a member of the queens inner circle, with the status of a handmaiden. Each of the handmaidens was ordered to wear the exact same type of clothes. But the colors had to be different. Mine, was a combination of white and dark green. The girl that had just run away, was wearing white and yellow, and so on.

The queen waved lightly, showing that she accepted my greeting, and I was allowed to rise and take my place standing next to her throne. This is going to be another boring afternoon of partially listening to discussions about the law, and incoming slave exports from other planets. These types of discussions are growing in number as the queens long-awaited large slave auction is about to begin. It starts tomorrow and lasts for a whole week. We are also planning to be present at its opening, but from the queen's clear love for this event, I
expect to spend most of the next week there. Yet the thought of that strange feeling just now seemed to not lessen. What is the reason for this force premonition, am I imagining this? No, it clearly was trying to warn me to something, but what?

The door opened, as two people were escorted into the throne room with four armed soldiers. I didn't really pay attention to it at first. As I was trying to figure out, what that warning was about, I heard as one of the guards named the man who was led before the queen.

-My queen, I present, Lars Quell.

That was the moment I suddenly felt two pairs of shocked, yet still burning gazes suddenly stuck to me. Followed by sudden spikes of emotions appearing in the throne room which made me flinch a bit; l looked around for the source of these emotional and uncomfortable gazes that were still stuck to me. My eyes soon met, with the cold eyes of this Lars Quell... And I froze like a deer in the headlights. Lars Quell, my ass, this was Anakin Skywalker, and he was currently sending daggers after daggers into me, emitting an even more powerful pressure, if that is even possible, than he did last time we met.

The queen had sensed my plight, or had just got annoyed by me gaining most of the attention, and decided to interrupt this silent communication.

-I see, that my handmaiden has gained your attention. She is of fine stock, indeed, and a rare breed at that. Which is the reason why she is not for sale; but tell me, what news do you bring of Bruno Denturri?

The moment Skywalker's attention was lifted from me, I immediately felt relieved. As he proceeded to interact with the queen, I remembered, that there was another gaze that was intensely stuck to my body. I looked up, only to see, that the covered-up person next to Skywalker somewhere in their discussion had been revealed as none other than Ahsoka, disguised as a slave... She was giving me a sad, angry, disappointed and longing gaze. Oh, no, don't look at me like that... I felt as if a knife had been turned around my insides over and over again. As she was giving me that disappointed expression, as if I had just killed her puppy...

-Nizzy, bring us some refreshments to the balcony, my dear.

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-Yes, please do so. Suddenly I feel quite thirsty for refreshments.

I gulped at that, damn you Skywalker. You wanted to say revenge, but for what? Are you still on that Gay Lord misunderstanding? How can you be so petty.

The queen and Lars, I mean Skywalker, began their walk to the balcony, while Ahsoka was still giving me a sad look. Just, just give me a brake! I decided to run away to find those damnable refreshments, especially as I saw that Ahsoka was about to ask me something, or maybe just to scold me...

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Ahsoka was shocked and speechless when she found her long-lost friend, the friend that was wanted by the jedi order for over two years. The friend that escaped from a highly secured prisoner transporter ship, by the help of some unidentified droid, that destroyed every evidence of its existence after it was defeated except a few handfuls of metal dust. The friend that seemingly disappeared as if she had never even existed in the first place, there was not even a picture or a video captured of her this whole time. Much mystery and secrets were connected to the strange girl who lived in the jedi temple for about two weeks, yet she managed to create a mountain of unanswered questions.

A year after she completely disappeared, which by itself was another mystery. As the planetary scanners around Coruscant followed the ship that she used to enter the atmospheric border, where the scanners naturally lost its signal for a few seconds because of static interference. Strangely, the signal never appeared again, the ship which was also a mystery in itself, as it was the same type of ship that Revan, the betrayer used in the mandalorian wars thousands of years ago. It was even named the same way, Ebon Hawk disappeared. After a months of futile search the Jedi council had decided to make the announcement that the mysterious force sect namely The Order of the Grey should be taken into the archives as a more than likely existing order, and any information on their presence and influence should be taken to Jocasta Nu for further processing.

Over these two years the historians and researchers of the order had indeed found evidence to the existence of this weird order. There were many sightings of mysterious strangers, who suddenly appeared and helped out or sometimes fought against jedi. Their appearance seemingly had no pattern; it was unorganized. There were records of sightings from the uncharted territories far behind the known perimeters of the galaxy by expeditioners, just as in the core words. They seemed to be present everywhere, but nowhere. The first suspected report of a member of this order being found in the archives was over three thousand years ago. A young cerean man named Ari Grey, who had been in possession of a silver-colored lightsaber and distinctly odd behaviors, just for example: loudly speaking to himself. He had been reported to the Naboo authorities with the suspicion of schizophrenia; not long later he was successfully apprehended. It is noted that the man was very cooperative and offered no resistance while the policeman took him into custody.

After a few weeks of observations and a few different tests, the doctors decided that the man was healthy and not a threat to anyone. So they confiscated his lightsaber and let him go after he paid the fine for illegally possessing a lightsaber. They later sent the confiscated weapon to the Coruscant Jedi temple, but it mysteriously never arrived.

There were many stories like this, and one thing was the same in all of them. Each mysterious force-wielder had a silver-colored lightsaber, and his or her last name was Grey. The name Grey is an often used last name in the galaxy, and because the sightings happened in entirely different places and times, often passing hundreds of years between each report. It is unsurprising that, until today, nobody connected the dots.

Ahsoka, when she first saw the familiar form of the twi'lek girl, with the same bored expression over her face as she stood next to the queen's throne. She couldn't believe it. The reason for that, was quite obvious. She looked exactly the same as she last saw her more than two years ago. There wasn't any difference except her cloths. She was carefully following the girl's every action: her body language, and face mimics were all familiar. Soon she turned towards them, and there was no need for any jedi special sense to realize that the girl recognized them. Her bored expression changed into one that resembled a scared child's that was caught with her hand in the honey jar. There was no more question about who she was.
Ahsoka was long waiting for the moment to find her, but for sure she never imagined their reunion in the palace of a Zygerrian Slaver Queen, none the less as slaves themselves. The force had a sickeningly dark humor at times.

Also, Ahosoka felt pretty confused about this whole situation. Was she here the whole time? She wanted to ask so many questions from her, that she suddenly couldn't make up her mind for which one to start with, but before she could pick one, the girl turned around and ran away. Just like that...

In retrospect it was probably for the better, since revealing their connection would have jeopardized the whole mission. Did she realize that and run away?

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