Avila: the last of Dorotea's faithful

Sister Avila was a Truthsayer and a senior member of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood on Wallach IX. Her long service began in blood. In the schism that split the school after the death of Reverend Mother Raquella Berto-Anirul, Avila stood among the sisters loyal to Dorotea, and she alone walked away alive when Valya Harkonnen forced Dorotea's followers to choose between obedience and death. For decades afterward she served Valya's Sisterhood as a trusted lieutenant, managing the school's affairs, teaching its acolytes, and enforcing its hard doctrine of sacrifice. Yet the loyalty she had buried on the day of the purge never fully died, and when Dorotea returned to Wallach IX in the body of Lila, it was Avila who placed in her hands the means to destroy the thinking machine Anirul and the breeding index it guarded.

The purge of Dorotea's faithful#

Avila was training on Wallach IX when Raquella's death broke the school in two. One faction followed Valya Harkonnen. The other remained loyal to Dorotea, whom they believed had taken her own life in grief after Raquella died. The truth was otherwise, but the loyalists did not know it, and Avila stood among them.

Valya did not permit the division to stand. Together with Tula Harkonnen, Francesca, and Kasha Jinjo, she came to the sisters who still held to Dorotea and delivered an ultimatum: follow her, or follow Dorotea's example. She drove the command home with the Voice, and several of the sisters slit their own throats where they stood. When the killing was finished, only Avila remained. She agreed to cover up what had happened, and the dead were hidden in a mass grave. Whatever Avila carried away from that day, she buried it as deeply as the bodies, and for decades no one had cause to doubt where she stood.

In the service of Mother Superior Valya#

In the years that followed, Avila rose to become one of the most trusted sisters on Wallach IX. She brought the day's requests from the Great Houses to Valya for review, and the Mother Superior told her which petitions to grant and which to deny. When Valya's orders were harsh, it fell to Avila to see them carried out and to steady those who flinched.

The hardest of those orders concerned the acolyte Lila. Valya had commanded that the girl be put through the Agony to reach information held in her other memory, and Avila spoke with Tula about the decision. Tula resisted, but she knew the order was Valya's, and she went through with it. The two women watched as Raquella spoke through Lila before the girl collapsed, limp and unresponsive.

No one had ever recovered from the state Lila was in, and it was Avila who finally insisted that she could not be kept alive any longer. She reminded the grieving Tula of the words Raquella herself used to say, "We must channel our human energy in the service of the future," and warned that keeping Lila in limbo sowed only pain and confusion. She brought the other acolytes to say goodbye, telling them that sacrifices were necessary in service to the mission of the Sisterhood, and afterward she told Tula that Valya would be proud of her.

The nightmares on Wallach IX#

The school's order began to fray when a shared dream swept through the acolytes, a nightmare so uniform that all of them save Jen cried out in their sleep on the same night. When Jen and Emeline reported it to Tula, Avila's counsel was containment. She suggested the acolytes return to their studies and urged Tula to leave the matter alone so it might pass from their minds. Tula ignored her. She had the acolytes take spice and draw what they had seen, and the drawings converged into the same images. The women realized that it was the terror in the dream itself that had woken the students. Avila reversed her position and argued that the acolytes had to be told before the fear consumed them, but Tula warned that telling them could cause hysteria.

The strain surfaced in the training hall. While Avila was drilling the acolytes in moving heat energy, Jen spoke up and demanded to know what such lessons mattered when nightmares were plaguing them all. Avila told her she was out of line, and Tula stepped in to take Jen out of the room.

Not long after, Avila went to the storeroom to speak with Tula and was shocked when Lila stepped out of the room alive. The girl whose farewell Avila had presided over had been secretly preserved. Avila questioned Tula and asked whether Valya knew, but Tula answered only that she was doing what she had been told to do, dismissed her, and ordered her to tell no one what she had seen.

Dorotea's return#

The secrets of Wallach IX came apart when Dorotea returned, speaking and acting through Lila's body. She told the assembled school the truth of her death, that it had been Valya's doing and no suicide, and the foundation of thirty years of obedience cracked. With both Valya and Tula gone from the school, the last of Dorotea's faithful made her choice. Avila gave Dorotea the tool she used to access the storeroom and destroy Anirul, and with the thinking machine died the breeding index it held. The sole survivor of the purge had kept Valya's secret for a generation, and in the end she was the one who helped undo the work that secret had protected.