Private Beacon Beyond the Border

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Robes
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings, Seer Stone, Wayfinder's Flare, Engagement Ring
Tag: Aiden Porte

Wann Tsir. The name alone carried a kind of dry hush, like wind sifting over salt flats.

The shuttle hissed closed behind Eve as she stepped onto the sun-bleached duracrete of the town’s starport. Heat shimmered in thin waves off the landing pads, and the air smelled faintly of ozone and unfamiliar spices. Around her, the town bustled in quiet, measured rhythms, a mosaic of traders, labourers and travellers speaking a dozen languages, their glances quick but lingering when they noticed the white Jedi armour and the single black eyepatch.

She adjusted the strap of her satchel, her thumb brushing the smooth surface of her comm device. Somewhere beyond these streets, a distress beacon was calling.

It had come in on open channels, an old code, but authentic. It was marked with distress and panic. So it was no question that Eve had gone to investigate.

She moved through the streets, passing open-air stalls where vendors hawked bright cloths and steaming skewers of spiced meat. Alien children darted between the crowd, shouting in a language Eve didn’t know. Eyes followed her, a few with hope, more with wary curiosity. A Jedi was a rare sight here.

Finally, she reached the speeder taxi rank at the town’s edge.

The droids running the service turned their photoreceptors toward her as she approached, murmuring in metallic voices. Eve took a deep breath, the heat pressing into her skin, and gave the coordinates she’d triangulated from the distress beacon. The droid nodded, gesturing to a battered speeder whose engine hummed in a low, steady growl.

Eve climbed in. As the speeder lifted off and turned toward the open wilderness, the town fell away behind her in the dust.

Somewhere out there was a call for help, and she would find it.

 

[Aiden Porte]

Something is calling for you.....

Do you hear it....

The Jedi Knight took a deep breath as the speeder came to a halt, close to the edge of the forest. He closed his eyes, focusing on the energies of the force. As he reached out to see what it was that awaited him. There were several figures, a few that were cloaked and drenched in darkness. While there was another that was surrounded by light. And the more he peered in the vastness of the force, there was another one, a child it would appear. She appeared to be in distress and was on the move, running for her life.

Aiden climbed off the speeder bike as peered off into the edge of the forest. In a few hours he would lose the daylight and darkness would come. He had everything that he could need as he began his venture into the forest, unsure of laid before him. Whatever it was, he knew someone was in trouble, and he would have to make haste and find them quickly.

Whatever it was, he wasn't alone.

Light, and hope were always with him.

Everest Vale

 

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Personal Armour
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings, Seer Stone, Wayfinder's Flare, Engagement Ring
Tag: Aiden Porte

The speeder’s repulsors hummed low as it carried Eve further from the town and into the open wilds. The land beyond the outskirts was a rolling tapestry of scrubland and thin forest, the air sharper and cooler with every kilometre. She kept her gaze forward, one hand lightly resting on the hilt at her belt, the other braced on the side of the open cab as the wind tugged strands of silver hair loose from their braid.

The beacon’s signal was still faint, intermittent, like a candle guttering in the wind. She’d memorised its pulse and tone during the trip out here, letting it sync with her breathing until she could almost hear it beneath the noise of the engine.

When the driver slowed, the wilderness pressed close around them. Ahead, the treeline loomed, shadows already pooling at its base as the light dipped toward evening.

Eve paid her fare, stepping down onto the dusty roadside. She closed her eye and reached into the Force, letting its current pull her focus deeper. Threads of presence emerged from the haze: fear, sharp and quick; shadows lurking at the edges of her perception; and, fainter still, something steady, bright.

She exhaled, eye opening to the darkening forest. A storm was gathering out there.

And someone else was moving toward them.

 

[Aiden Porte]

Did you see her....

She's out there.....

The forest greeted Aiden with a hush, the kind that made every branch creak and every leaf rustle feel louder than it should. His boots pressed softly into forest, following the tremors he had felt through the Force.

Her presence flickered like a lantern caught in a storm, bright, frightened, and darting. The darkness that pursued her was heavier, deliberate, angry. The Shadows pressed against his senses, their malice sharpening the air until each breath felt weighted.

There would be a time to fight, but not yet. Right now, he needed to find her before the others did. A sudden snap of a branch up ahead. He froze, lowering his stance slightly. The Force rippled with two presences, moving swiftly between the trees. The child's fear began to climb and rise.

The Jedi Knight's heart steadied and his mind cleared. He pushed forward, a blur of cloak and determination, letting the Force guide his steps. Each pace brought him closer to the storm, and to the choice that awaited him within it.

The trees grew denser as he pressed forward, their trunks like pillars in a vast and dim cathedral. Shafts of fading sunlight pierced through the canopy in narrow blades, catching the drifting motes of dust and pollen in the air. The further he went, the more the silence pressed down on him, broken only by the occasional cry of some unseen creature in the distance. The child's presence wavered again. Close and then farther, as though she were stumbling in her panic. Aiden slowed his breathing, letting the rhythm of the Force keep him centered, each inhale and exhale anchoring him against the undertow of fear that tugged at the edges of his awareness.

Somewhere behind the child, the darkness moved. He could feel it slithering along the treeline, never fully revealing itself, but always there. Watching. Waiting. The more he tried to focus on it, the more it slipped from his grasp, like smoke between his fingers. A sudden rustle to his right drew his attention. He turned sharply, hand brushing the hilt at his belt, nothing. Only branches swaying in the evening wind. Still, the forest felt alive with hidden eyes, every shadow stretching a little too far.

Then, faint and clear, a sound carried through the stillness.

A child's sob.

It was close, fragile and wavering will.

There was another presence he felt, another light it seemed was closing on the storm as well. It seemed they would be reaching chaos at the same time.

Everest Vale

 

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Personal Armour
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings, Seer Stone, Wayfinder's Flare, Engagement Ring
Tag: Aiden Porte

The forest was restless. Eve pressed forward, boots snapping twigs and sending low brush whispering in her wake. She had felt it the moment she stepped beneath the canopy, the sudden flare of panic, like a wounded bird thrashing in its cage. A child.

The feeling was unmistakable.

She inhaled, focusing through the rush of adrenaline. And then, beneath it, she felt something else: a steady current of Light, firm and clear. Not the child. Another presence, older, trained. A Jedi. Whoever they were, they were moving quickly toward the same thing.

Eve's pace quickened.

The shadows gathered as she ran, hidden presences stirring at the edges of her awareness, pricking like cold needles at the back of her neck. They were not chasing her, not yet, but closing in on all of them, creeping nearer with every breath.

Then, through a narrow break in the trees, Eve saw her. A small figure scrambling through the undergrowth, stumbling, tears on her face that caught the last threads of evening light.

"Hey!" Eve called out, her voice cutting across the hush. The girl's head jerked up, wide-eyed. Eve closed the distance in long strides, reaching her and lowering herself slightly to meet her frightened gaze.

"It's alright," she said, gentle but firm. "You're safe now. I'm here. I'm a Jedi."

Even as she spoke, the presence she'd felt earlier arrived, steady as a stone in the tide. Eve turned sharply, her hand brushing the hilt at her belt, her silver eye narrowed.

The Force told her what he was before her voice did, but still she called out, clear and unyielding,

"Who goes there?"

 

[Aiden Porte]

Hurry....

Aiden stepped from the shadows with deliberate calm, the weight of the forest heavy on his shoulders. The panic he'd felt, the sharp, raw cry of the child had pulled him here as surely as if the Force itself had guided his stride. But it wasn't just the girl he found. There was another that was with the child and it was her who spoke to him.

The woman before him had her hand near her weapon, her presence sharp as tempered steel, but beneath it he could sense a flicker of something else, resolve, born of care for the child clinging at her side.

He let his hand fall away from his lightsaber, though not far. The shadows around them quivered, and he knew their time for words was narrowing.

"My name is Aiden Porte," he said evenly, voice carrying just enough to cut through the restless hush. "Jedi Knight of the High Republic. I felt her fear as well." His gaze softened as it dropped to the girl, mud streaked across her cheeks, wide eyes brimming with tears. "And I came to make sure she would not face it alone."

The dark in the treeline stirred again, closer this time. Aiden felt the brush of it against his senses, hungry, searching, a cold seep into the light. He drew a quiet breath through his nose and turned his focus back to the woman.

"I don't know you," he admitted, keeping his tone calm but firm, "but the Force has brought us to the same place, for the same purpose. Whatever hunts her… it will come for all of us. And when it does—"

He unclipped his saber, the hilt resting in his palm but still unlit. His eyes, steady and clear, met the glint of her silver one.

"—we must stand together or we will fall."

Everest Vale

 

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Personal Armour
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings, Seer Stone, Wayfinder's Flare, Atrisian Dancer, Engagement Ring
Tag: Aiden Porte

Eve's silver eye held on him for a long moment, weighing the words, the steady calm that carried them. The child pressed closer against her side, clutching at her sleeve, and Eve exhaled slowly, letting the tension bleed from her shoulders.

"Everest Vale," she said at last, her voice soft but resolute. "Jedi Knight."

The introduction hung for a breath, a flicker of fragile calm between them.

Then the forest shuddered.

The air thickened with a sudden cold, and the hush of the trees broke with a groaning creak as if the roots themselves strained against the soil. From the treeline, a figure emerged, cloaked and indistinct, its edges blurred as if it were woven from shadow itself. Its eyes burned faintly, a hungry gleam, and with a slow tilt of its head it fixed on the child.

The girl whimpered, and the earth answered. A gnarled root tore up from the ground, snaking toward her ankle.

Eve's blade hissed to life in a line of white light, her free hand cutting a sharp gesture. The root recoiled as though struck, snapping back into the dirt.

But the reprieve was only an instant.

Two more shadows burst from the treeline, swift and predatory, their movements wrong, too fast and too fluid. One lunged low for the girl again, the other for Eve herself. She stepped into them, her body moving with Echani grace, blade sweeping in a tight arc that caught the lunging shadow mid-strike. The impact rang through her arms.

She adjusted, grounding her stance, every motion deliberate and measured. The girl cried out again, but now she was behind them, shielded by two blades. Eve's breath steadied.

The shadows hissed, circling. The air grew darker still. Whatever this presence was, it had no intention of letting them leave the forest alive.

 

[Aiden Porte]

Aiden's saber leapt to life with a snap-hiss, its blue-white glow cutting a sharp line through the thickening gloom. The hum steadied him, a reminder that fear had no hold here. Not while he stood. The Force rippled like a storm around them, roots twisting, shadows coiling, the forest itself recoiling from the presence that had stepped out of its own darkness. The child's terror spiked, a piercing note in the current, and Aiden felt it like a dagger pressing against his chest. He shifted instinctively, placing himself half a step between her and the advancing shapes.

"Stay behind us," he told her, voice firm but calm, even as his gaze fixed on the predators circling.

Eve moved like water beside him, her white blade a streak of precision. He matched her rhythm without thought, the Force knitting their movements together as though they had trained side by side all their lives. One of the shadow-forms darted in again, unnaturally swift. Aiden pivoted, saber intercepting the blow. The clash rattled through his bones, it was like striking ice and smoke at once, his blade sliding against resistance that should not exist. With a sharp exhale, he pressed, forcing it back into the murk.

"They're drawn to her," Aiden realized aloud, his eyes narrowing on the child's trembling form. "She's the center." The Force pulsed with certainty. Whatever these things were, their hunger was not for him, nor for Eve, it was for the girl's light.

The largest of the figures tilted its head again, as though amused, its burning gaze never leaving the child. Aiden felt the weight of its malice pressing at the edges of his mind, whispering, testing his defenses like claws against glass. He shut it out with effort, his focus tightening into clarity.

He glanced at Eve, silver eye flashing in the pale glow of her saber. "We can't let them encircle us. Hold them here, break their momentum." His jaw set. "I'll drive them back."

The shadows stirred again, preparing to strike.

Aiden adjusted his grip, grounding himself. The Force flowed into his limbs, cool and steady, and when the next lunge came, he was already moving, meeting it head on.

Everest Vale

 

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Personal Armour
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings, Seer Stone, Wayfinder's Flare, Atrisian Dancer, Engagement Ring
Companion: Isari
Tag: Aiden Porte

Eve shifted, easing the girl behind her with a gentle press of her hand. The child's small fingers clung to her sleeve, trembling, and she felt the sharp edge of that fear cut into her chest.

The shadows pressed closer. Their weight dragged at the air, heavy and suffocating, their eyes burning with a hunger she knew wasn't meant for her. Aiden was right — they wanted the child.

Her grip tightened on the hilt of Stillness. White light hissed across the gloom, and she stepped into the circle the shadows tried to draw around them. One lunged low, too fast, but she was faster, her body sliding into a tight pivot. Blade swept in a clean arc, forcing it back.

The girl whimpered again. Eve's breath steadied. She reached, not with her blade this time but with her heart, letting the warmth she carried flow outward. Light swelled, sudden and sharp, spilling from her like a pulse of sunlight breaking through cloud.

The nearest shadow shrieked and faltered, its form scattering like smoke in the wind. Others recoiled, only for the forest to lurch in answer — roots tearing free, branches cracking overhead, the whole canopy shivering as if it too had fallen under their malice.

She felt Aiden beside her, his rhythm firm, his blade striking with clarity. Without words, her movements began to fold into his, like water flowing around stone. Where he pressed, she caught the opening. Where he held, she drove forward.

It was enough to hold them, but not for long.

Her silver eye cut across the clearing, past the writhing roots, to the girl huddled between them.

"We can't stay here," she called, voice taut with urgency. "If we do, they'll close the circle."

The shadows hissed again, regrouping, their shapes swelling darker against the edge of the light.

They were going to come in force.

 

[Aiden Porte]

The Force screamed warning before the shadows moved, a cold pressure rising like a tide. Aiden braced, saber angled high, meeting the rush head-on. His blade carved through the lunging dark, sparks of light scattering in the gloom where it tore away their shape. The strike slowed it, but did not end it, the form slithered back into the trees, reforming with a hiss.

Every motion was wrong. They didn't fight like beings of flesh but like phantoms wrapped in hunger. Each blow had to be answered twice, once against their speed, again against the malice that clung to them.

But then he felt it.

A warmth breaking against the cold, sudden and radiant, Eve. Her light unfurled outward, striking at the shadows in a way steel never could. For an instant, they faltered, shrieking as if the forest itself had turned against them. Aiden's jaw tightened, his heart steadying around the flame she cast into the dark.

He adjusted, letting his rhythm bend into hers. She moved like water, flowing swift and sharp, and he set himself as the rock against which the tide broke. Her cuts found the gaps his guard left; his defense filled the spaces her speed could not hold. The dance was unspoken but seamless, two blades weaving one pattern. Still, the forest strained under their feet, roots splitting stone, branches groaning, a storm of malice pressing in. The child's fear spiked again, and Aiden felt it in his bones: the shadows swelled stronger each time she faltered.

Eve's voice cut sharp through the clash. "We can't stay here. If we do, they'll close the circle."

She was right. Already the shapes spread wider, forming a ring of fireless flame. Their eyes gleamed from every side, narrowing the space, waiting for the moment when their prey would have nowhere left to move. Aiden shifted back half a step, his free hand rising. The Force gathered at his palm, steady and sure. "Then we break it," he called over the hiss of sabers, his tone firm with resolve. His eyes caught Eve's silver one, unwavering. "Hold the center. I'll carve us a path."

Without waiting for reply, he exhaled into the Force, and then he struck, saber cutting in a two-handed sweep while a wave of power surged outward from him. Roots shuddered, branches split, and for the first time the circle of shadows rippled, broken by the push. A path yawned open between the trees, narrow, unsteady, but there.

"Go!" Aiden said, voice filled with iron will. "Take her, now!"

The shadows shrieked as the light pressed them back, already drawing tight again. The choice would have to be made in seconds.

Everest Vale