Five years, one month and ten days.
It had been her twentieth birthday the other week too, or at least she believed it had been.
Her time keeping had once been infallible, but the years had seen it slowly slip away from her. Eroded into the bog and jungles of Dxun.
For the first year, she had been afraid - positively terrified of everything around her. Who wouldn’t be? A fifteen year old Padawan left isolated and trapped on the Demon Moon. Those that she had cared for, who had provided her with safety and security had been taken from her in the blink of an eye. She had prayed and begged for them to return, but it went unanswered. Her fellow Jedi; her Master was gone. She had tried to search through the Force, reach out across the galaxy to find her. All she found was an emptiness, as if countless numbers had sudden been taken from their place.
The second and third years had been the worst. The reality of her situation had well and truly sunk in for Vaylin. But she was a Zabrak; an Iridonian. This was just another obstacle that needed to be surpassed.
At least that’s what she told herself. Fooled her mind into thinking.
She made strides to become one with the jungles around her, to become its boogeyman, rather than being haunted by the ones that already existed. What remained of her Master’s old ship became her shelter, a place of safety at first - then nothing more than a resting place after a hunt. Even the constant storms became nothing to her, she even embraced them - using them as cover for her tracking. It was during this time that she became unafraid of the various beasts, especially so after she discovered she could communicate with some of them. It was a bizarre thing, but how would you explain seeing a teenage girl wandering the jungle with a pair of Maalraas at her side.
Then the fourth year came about, and that’s when she found it. The Dark.
Vaylin had felt it crawling at her for years, nipping away at her defences bit by bit. She had been feeling it ever since she had first arrived, recalled her Master cautioning them all to be careful, that Dxun was a festering ground for the Dark Side. Hell, there was even a temple to some ancient Sith Lord somewhere on the moon. Vaylin had been oblivious to it back then, but over the years she had grown accustom to it, allow herself to sink into it like a bog.
The light had abandoned her, no one had come for her.
So she embraced it, and truly became one with the jungles of Dxun.
If she just laid there, her entire being flat against the dirt, she could feel the Force practically humming across the moon. It had been a window into it, a very useful one when it came to scouting. Over the years she had felt the presences of people come and go, never particularly coming close to her territory. But over the course of the last year she felt something stirring in the galaxy, many more were coming to Dxun for one reason or another.
A year ago she had felt it, a familiar presence in the Force she had almost mistaken for her old Master. But it wasn’t, instead it was one of the other Jedi with them at the time: [member="Jacob Crawford"]. One couldn’t blame her for immediately wanting to find him, she wanted answers. Why and how did he return? But by the time she could reach him, he had already been captured and carted off to a large metal building. Then in the recent months she felt him moving, leaving the confines of that place and leave the moon with another.
The past several months in general had been abuzz with activity.
There had been a pair of Jedi; a learner and a teacher who had come, the light side that emanated from them was like a blight amongst the dark side that festered on Dxun. But Vaylin had watched them briefly, her interest peaked when the older of the two had begun instructing on how to tame beasts.
Then another pair; this time a man and a woman had arrived and immediately went towards the temple that simply reeked of the dark side; to an almost suffocating degree. To Vaylin, the man felt like he was lost to the Force at the time - his companion on the other hand was a mystery. Almost as if she was cloaking herself to one side.
The last, well she practically
heard them. A group of men and women, some dressed in armor and others not. Most were not connected to the Force, but all seemed to share a common goal. They had been building something, an outpost if she heard correctly during her time eavesdropping.
But now there was a new one, someone had arrived on Dxun slap bang in the middle of her territory. The animalistic instincts that had slowly woven into Vaylin’s mind was screaming at her to hunt. Who’d dare intrude on her land?
So she stalked and hunted, following the woman not longer after she had landed. Vaylin kept her distance though, watching as she stumbled about the place; losing her ship to the jungle’s bog. The moment the newcomer had found shelter, Vaylin began to plot. Eventually she directed her current maalraas to stalk close by, to spook the woman out. But it didn’t seem to work, and her pet returned to her side.
Vaylin grumbled to herself as she stared down at the shipwreck, just about seeing the flickering of a fire beneath it. Remaining in her hiding place up in a tree close by, she let out a series of growls to the maalraas below. The beast let out it’s own, before shifting its entire posture down and began a sprint towards the wreck.
[member="Aria Vale"]
