The Girl

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]​

The rains had been falling for days now but that didn’t stop training. Exercise had proven to be a calming activity that took the mind off of things that would otherwise have driven her mad. As long as she focused on the rhythms and flows of her movements she was fine. There still was no lightsaber involved, no force routines, or anything that could have proven to be a danger to others. Outbursts still happened, they were fewer and far between, but she still had them and that alone was reason enough to hold it off. Besides that, the girl needed exercise. Having lived in a cell didn’t leave her with much strength outside of her fits of rage.

She could still stand to eat more but at least by now she could be seen without people worrying about her health. They still did, of course, but for other reasons. It was hard to hide your emotions amongst force users, and even more so when you yourself was — apparently — one of them. Eyna still had no memory of who it was that she was or what had made her forget. Some of the Jedi had tried to dig into her mind but found the same emptiness that she herself had experienced whenever she tried to remember. It was like punching jelly, the memories shifted and changed when you tried to get to them and it only caused Eyna further pain each time that they had attempted it.

With time, perhaps these things would start to make sense. But for now they had settled on simply keeping her under watch pending the go ahead to start practice. Until then all she could do was to get acclimated to the environment. The knight that acted as overseer for her had recently run a long string of meet ‘n’ greets that Eyna had attended. Together they had found that the more she was exposed to something, the easier the anger grew to manage.

As she finished her fifth runthrough of a well-practiced routine and her training staff found the floor of the gazebo, Eyna took a seat on a nearby bench and began to unwind. In the distance she could see the overseer approach her in the distance with someone in tow.

The knight had briefed Coci on the very short reason they were doing this. Eyna was unstable but improving and for each person she interacted with, and as time passed, she seemed to grow more comfortable in the environment that she had been put in. She had been found in a cell on Eliad by members of the ORC, but under mysterious circumstances had found herself assaulted near a Ranger patrol. The patrol had not survived save for a single member, Amon Vizsla, who had brought Eyna here in the aftermath. She was an amnesiac, knew nothing of her life yet understood enough to know that she had been stripped off them, somehow. Certain phrases triggered a mnemonic flashback that more often than not manifested in violent outbursts. One such word was, ironically enough given where she was, Jedi.

“She has settled in, but we don’t think she is quite ready to undergo training just yet.” He said as they stepped out from under the roof and into the rain. “Those around her can’t deny that she is a fascinating mystery, but a dangerous one as well. We’re lucky that the Rangers found her when they did.”

In front of them, out of earshot Eyna dragged a hand through her hair and began to relax. This was becoming part of the standard routine for her at this point. Part of her found it to be frustrating, another exhilarating. There were too many people in the Silver Jedi, but she found great joy in knowing that it was her own memory that was being forged and she made it a point to memorize every single person she interacted with.

“Hello Eyna,” Said her overseer as they approached. “This is Master Heavenshield. Figured you might want to meet her.”

The girl’s eyes shifted over towards the woman. She didn’t utter a word. Green eyes lingered with a passive, tired stare as she took in the face and put it to memory along with the others.

A quiet moment passed until eventually,

“Hi.” Eyna said and looked over at her overseer who gave her an encouraging nod. Her attention shifted back to Coci. “I am Eyna.”

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

Many years ago, and in dire circumstances, Coci placed herself into a state of Morichro. After expelling a dark presence that had ensnared her friend Connor Harrison, possessed by the foul creature, the only way for him to live was to become possessed of it herself, to trap it within her being. She had not been trained for it, not the presence of the darkness, that she could cope with, but there was no way for her to come back, Coci didn’t know how.

She had spent weeks in hospital back on Voss, her husband by her side and eventually Coci began to slip away. Thurion would not sit by and watch his wife succumb to it and with great danger to himself, he entered her mind and pulled her back toward the light and back into her own mind. And it was not until the maleficent presences within her was expelled and placed back from where it had come, could she start her recovery.

From that day onward, Coci had trained hard and deeply in the force abilities of the mind, it’s control and the ability to use it against others. And to great effect over the years fighting against the Sith or anyone that threatened the freedoms of others. Now in the years that have passed Coci had become stronger, the abilities she used against others could now be used as a tool in which to help people that suffer metal disabilities, especially those forced against a mind unwilling.

The briefing on this case had been limited, a unique case that the best minds in the Silver Jedi struggled to find an answer or move forward with a designed process toward a resolution for this girl. From what the briefing told her, the girl suffered from mnemonic flashbacks triggered by certain words and situations although the healers had narrowed down some of the triggers, there were still outbursts of a violent nature. There had been some progress with the girl, but still a long way ahead for her until she reached a point were a semblance of peace of mind was achieved.

Coci was here to try and move that progress in a positive direction, even if only a few steps. She was not here to judge the girl, or examine her, but simply to see for herself at what point along the process they had come.

“Hello Eyna, you can call me Coci”, she offered a soft smile, “Mind if I sit with you for a while and have a chat?”.

[member="Eyna"]​

 

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]

Those smiles unnerved her. Everyone she talked to was too kind, too open and warm about her presence as if they tried to pretend she had been there as long as some of the padawans had been. They kept her in a room that was bigger than her cell yet just as empty, the people she caught a glance of appeared happy to see her in passing but quickly seemed to grow worried and curious of her situation. Eyna tried not to see it as an insult, but some days it was just hard not to. Master Heavenshield was friendly now, but how soon until she too saw the hazard Eyna apparently posed? How long until this Order also separated her because she couldn’t follow orders or do as she was told?

Eyna stopped herself from spiraling too far. They had taught her that these emotions were what she needed to control, that the anger she felt was part of something that had been put upon her by someone else. Though the downhill spiral had already started. A darkness brewed inside of her and it was hard to miss that, but so was the small flicker in its midst. It didn’t burn bright, but it was there. A thin layer of frustration sizzled and popped under her skin as once more Eyna glanced at her overseer with a cautious glance as if to seek his confirmation that she should speak. Her mouth opened but she couldn’t really form any sort of words to give in response. Her shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Tell her about your training schedule,” The Jedi knight said and took a seat by Coci. “The cadences you go through.”

Eyna’s attention lifted from the floor towards the duo of Jedi again.

“One of the masters showed me how to do it.” She said and glanced down at her staff. “Said it was harmless enough that it couldn’t be used against anyone, yet simple enough to train the more important muscle groups.”

At the back of her mind something scratched, begging to get out. Eyna’s fingers curled up into fists. There were images of a blonde man, a grandmaster with a garbled name that was drowned out by a sound that tore at her senses, like gravel on a blackboard. He was a face in a dossier, a target for someone else to take care of should the opportunity arise. The dots didn’t connect, but this woman was important to the man in the pictures. However, the only problem was that the current grandmaster wasn’t a man. In fact there was no grandmaster at this point, just the assembly.

The memory faded and panic welled up inside. No sooner than the memory was there it was gone again. Eyna’s heart began to race, and with it so did the frustration and fear inside of her. Her breathing grew haggard as her entire body seemed to tense up.

“Oh no.” The overseer whispered under his breath. “Eyna?”

No response.

“Eyna!” He moved up towards her, making sure not to touch her. “Eyna. Snap out of it.”

“We have about ten seconds until she goes ballistic, Master Heavenshield.” The man turned to look at his senior. “You might want to step back.”

A flashback had been triggered.

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

She would not sit unless invited to by the Eyna, although the overseer was well meaning as was most of the healers in the Silver Rest, Coci wanted to be alone with the girl. There was no interest in her daily routine, no doubt that was well planned out and with some form of structure to give the girl sets of parameters to grow accustomed to, this was not why she was here.

The building frustration in the girl was without boundary and sensed strongly through the force, and even a discerning eye could see it in her body. Frustration was measured out from both parties, Eyna and Coci alike. Eyna was not a disease nor did she have one, “Leave us”, Coci calmly said to the overseer, who looked at her incredulously and with hesitation until meeting eyes with the master and there would be no questioning her again.

One word had been uttered, twice and something in the girl had triggered her change in her mind.

Heavenshield.

It was becoming clear that whoever had ‘programmed’ Eyna had an agenda against not only Jedi, but leaders of the Order, this one and probably others. When the overseer was out of range and heading back to the compound, Coci took a step forward toward the girl. She was ready for anything; a movement of her hand dispatched the training staff to the grass beyond the platform on which they stood and out of harms way.

And once more she uttered the probable trigger word. “Heavenshield”.

No harm would come to Eyna, but she wanted to see first hand exactly what the result of this programming would involve. As soon as the barrier was open to her mind, Coci would enter it by force if necessary and observe without the girl even aware of it.

[member="Eyna"] ​

 

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]

“This man is your enemy, along with this woman.” A man in One Sith armor bellowed across a room of soldiers. On display next to him were two pictures of Jedi. Coci would know these faces, one of them being her husband and the other being the then Republican Grandmaster. Their faces had been edited to appear far more menacing than they originally were. “Thu-” A sharp hiss pierced across the memory and Eyna twitched in pain outside of it. “-Heavenshield, and-” There was just more noise, and once more the pain spiked and Eyna’s arm began to shiver and shake. “-aster Co-” The girl’s hands tensed up in further anger. “-aaf.”

In the memory she looked down onto a pad to make notes. Yet what should have been the youthful hands of a girl that couldn’t possibly have been born yet was instead a man’s stubby fingers wrapped around a stylus that began to swipe away at the surface of a datapad. As he looked up again the captain looked across the room with an increasingly hateful grimace spreading on his face. His nose scrunched, his lips thinning out into a growl-like glower.

“Guess who has killed more of your brethren than any other jedi.”

In reality, Eyna’s eyes opened wide. A precision strike reached out to try and hit Coci across the face as inside of the girl’s mind ran a wave of images of maneuvers, dodges, and other means to keep herself alive. The buzz inside of her head began to burn away at the far reaches of her skull with a palpable sense of pain that spread across the force. She was in agony but she couldn’t stop herself. Eyna struggled against the torrent and tried her best to stay afloat but it was difficult. Another wild but increasingly tense swing reached for Coci that slowed before it could do much at all.

“Get-” Her teeth gritted under the tension of her own attempt at self-control. “The-” A grunt parted her lips. “Overseer!”

A stream of tears began to pour down her cheek as she clasped her hands against her head and fell to her knees. Another torrent of memories began to flood her mind, this time of her cell back on Eliad and the isolation she had suffered. It spoke of a lone, isolated girl observed by figures behind mirrored glass as she carved her name into the walls and floors of her cell, desperate to recall who she was. At the tail end of the memory swept a vague, barely audible voice of a woman under the winds.

“Stay strong, my Angel. Don’t let him destroy you.”

The memory faded, and Eyna woke up only to forget again.

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

The first strike that lashed out toward her, was fuelled with a rage with strong purpose, Coci was able to dodge it quickly enough and move to the side of the girl making it much harder for her to re-group and aim for the next strike, and there would be a next strike, her programming would not allow failure it would appear. But Coci did not wait for it, place a wall of the force between them and if the girl was to lash out again, it would hit it, not her.

The gates were open, her mind flooded with images of a past that were clearly not of things the girl had chosen for herself. Coci forcefully entered Eyna’s mind, remained on the periphery to watch and learn. Imagines were pulled to the front of the girl’s mind, force there and no doubt painful to the girl trying to block them. Visions of Thurion, Raaf .. Corvus? And herself twisted in the pleasure of whoever did this. The targets, the leaders of Jedi.

But there was something else, a small hint of the person responsible for it, a hand stubby and working to produce this horrible effect on her. Try as she might, Coci could not see his face, the mind of Eyna did not allow that, at least for now. The pain of the memories Coci could feel too, Eyna’s body tensing with it and the twisted words that worked on her mind like needles inserted into the brain.

The girl would try and strike her again, it hit the invisible wall of the force, but there was no conviction in the strike, she was fighting it. The will to do it, not her own and that was something they could work it. Eyna would feel the pain in her body and mind lessen, Coci would block it to ease the girls suffering.

The call for the overseer was ignored.

Remaining present in her mind, there was another voice, it was difficult to tell if this was a programmed image or voice or a true memory. Through the floor of tears, born from sadness and pain, the girls surroundings became clear. A horrid cell, a pen to the girl in which she no doubt spent many hours alone, what is the name on the wall? As Coci moved closer to see, it faded, and Enya returned to the present.

A soft voice, Coci only managed to hear the last of the words, “… don’t let him destroy you”…

Eyna face wet with tears changed before her eyes as she came back, and on her face the memory of the event gone. “Are you alright child?” was the pain still lingering, was there any fleeting memory of what just happened.

[member="Eyna"]​

 

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]

The girl shivered under the pressure of her memories until eventually Coci eased it. As she came back to it she found herself looking at an unfamiliar face. At least at first, as the dots connected she could draw a name to it: Coci, although the last name seemed to escape her. Any recollection of the memories that had surfaced was gone, but their effects were not unfelt. Remnants of an unfamiliar past lingered as Eyna tensed her jaw trying to place this Jedi amongst the others.

“No.” She finally said in response to the Master’s question. “I wouldn’t be here if I was.”

An undertone of bitterness and anger lingered at the back of the girl’s mind. Not entirely her own, yet undoubtedly something she felt for herself. Over in the distance she could see the overseer with their worried grimaces as they stepped into the courtyard to check up. Upon seeing Coci handling the situation they stopped for a second before they went away again, confident that the master knew what she was doing.

The frustration still burned under her skin. At least Eyna could identify that one as the comedown from her situation. If the last few weeks had taught her anything, it was how to identify that one. These Jedi seemed so damn keen on just doing what they could to trigger every memory they could think of, expecting her to remember what it was that had happened.

No, that was the wrong mindset. Eyna closed her eyes once more and took another deep breath. They needed to do this so that they could understand what it was that made Eyna go off. One could have argued they should have jumped to mentalism at the very start, but worries had been had about the girl’s already fractured mind.

Coci, having been the first inside of Eyna’s mind in a long while would be the first one to see the frayed rope ends. In places where one would expect to find a memory or an emotion, one would find a violently torn and suppressed dead-end. It was like staring at a breached door that you knew was there but couldn’t see. Something kept the memories inaccessible. Someone had made the effort to keep their tracks covered.

Eyna’s hand wrapped into fists at the familiar sensation of having someone poke at the inside of her mind again.

“You are inside of my head.” She clearly seemed agitated by it. “What are you hoping to find, Jedi?”

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

“Good”, she regarded the girl, “so you know you need to be here”. Coci did not sit, she was not here to banter pleasantries or get to know Eyna as a person, for now anyway, all of that could come later if time permitted. Or rather, if the girl wanted to.

“What I hoped to find were answers, questions. Both yours and mind. And from what I glimpsed, there is much work to be done, I am sure you are aware of that”. She looked out over the garden area to see the overseers hovering in the background, and Coci let out a sigh of frustration. Wondering if Eyna was forever watched, that alone would make anyone on edge or frustrated never to have time and space to yourself. It also indicated to her that they were at a loss, and progress was slow, if at all.

“I am not a healer or psychologist, or anyone associated with this field of mental health, but what I am is a mentalist”, she turned back to Eyna and with a dark stoic countenance and gaze, she met the girl’s eyes. “I can enter your mind at will, bend it, twist it, turn it to mush if I so pleased or control you”. A hint of a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

“But I am not here for that, that is the work of Sith, and I am not one. What I can do, is help you. Help you unravel the pain, the forgotten memories, find the answers to how you suffer this the way you do”. And find out who did this to her. “You may not remember what occurs when you enter into one of these events, and lash out or even why you do. But I assume you know of it, have been told what happens by the overseer”.

“So, I have one last question for you Eyna. Do you want to be rid of this, do you want help to find the answers?”. If not, Coci would leave the girl in peace and let the overseers continue on with their work, the best they can.

[member="Eyna"]​

 

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]

It wasn’t easy to open up or even trust someone to enter your mind. Eyna held her ground as Coci began to talk of answers and questions, her fists curled up and her teeth gritted in preparation for self-defense as the master nearly gloated about how easy it was to enter the girl’s mind to do whatever she wished. The idea of being used and experimented upon again, to do something she was manipulated into doing — it was enough to put her into a defensive stance. With her fists slowly rising out of fear to get ready for another fight for her life Eyna took a single step back before she eased up again. Those fists remained at the ready, but they were unwilling to swing, all because of that one promise.

Eyna felt compelled to slowly lower her hands. The other Jedi had been equipped to handle the situation and a few had tried but carelessly triggered one event or the other. The pains the procedures had left behind were always unbearable, like a migraine that just didn’t let up. She understood that with Coci it would most likely be the same. There was no readying for it. A mnemonic trigger was always hard to predict, they struck before you could even react.

To prepare for the pain, Eyna took a seat on her bench and let in a deep inhale followed by exhale. Her head nodded.

“Yes.” She said and looked up at Coci, her hands still wrapped into tight little fists. The girl closed her eyes and let the tension go as best she could. “Do your worst.”

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

"Don't you mean, 'do your best'?", Today was not the day, that was very clear to Coci as the girl sat on the bench in defiance. That would not get anywhere in the procedure she had in mind. "No not today at least", Coci walked toward the steps of the platform preparing to leave. In this state of mind, there was no way that Coci believed Eyna wanted help, it was almost as if she liked her restrictions, giving her a sense of security through them. And Coci was a threat to that, the only thing the girl had become comfortable in or with now once more, threaten to be removed.

Coci turned to look over Eyna once more, "Look at you, you sit there prepared to hit out once more, and I don't think you need a trigger word this time", there was a grin on her face, but this was not the reason for her leaving. "And I don't think you are ready for what I have in mind to help you". She let out a sigh as she stood thinking about what to do next.

"You don't trust me, and I don't trust you", she turned her body to directly face Eyna, and both of them had every right to it. "But I can help you Eyna, so you tell me how you would like to do this, if you want to do this at all". The idea of the girl thinking she would be just another experiment was something Coci would not abide, that simply would never happen, because there would be no reason for it.

"I would be willing to take all the time necessary for this, but you have to come part of the way as well".

​

​

[member="Eyna"]​

 

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]

No, she had meant worst. It wasn’t exactly as if people had done what was best for her up until this point even if they held good intentions. Like the rest of them Coci seemed to give up. Eyna felt a stone sink and crash against her shoulders. Some part of her had her hopes up that this would have been the one, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Yet the master stopped in her tracks and Eyna slowly looked over at her in response to her question.

“How does no-one understands why I am scared?” She asked and stood up from the bench. “Why is trust so obvious to some? I don’t know ‘trust.’ I have lived in a cell for my entire life. Now I live in another one that is just… Bigger.”

“My first experience with the world was a secret facility that was in the midst of burning down on Eliad. I have scars all over my body and mind from battles that I do not remember. One of these scars is a name that I seem to have carved into my own arm,” Eyna uncovered the scars on her forearm mid-sentence. “And I am unsure if that is even my actual name.” The girl let the sleeve roll back as she began to pace. “I met Yula Perl, I met the counselors in the survivors’ camp. I heard the word Jedi, a second passes, and I am somewhere far away from the city in a position to ambush and murder a patrol of Jedi troopers when I am ambushed by a cloaked figure trying to drag me back to whoever did this to me.”

“You don’t understand what it is like,” She exhaled, nearly pleaded to Coci. “To not be in control of your own actions no matter how hard you try. Nobody I have met does.”

“You are just another face in a crowd. I can’t trust you not to destroy what little there is left of ‘me’ when you are in there unless you meet me halfway. Tell me what you want to do, and how, and when.”

Perhaps by then it would be obvious that Eyna wasn’t very fond of her restrictions at all as much as afraid of forgetting what little she knew of the world. She didn’t know how her mind worked, she only knew that there had been moments right after her outbursts that she had forgotten what it was she had even been doing. The chance of this whole thing being one long fever dream of an outburst was too real of a threat for her to consider. What if she woke up in that cell again? What if this was all a figment of her imagination playing some cruel trick on her while she was somewhere else entirely?

The mere thought caused her heart to drop again as she looked around in a panic trying to get a grasp around the concept of reality again.

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

Now they were getting somewhere, Eyna had finally opened up and vented her frustrations and fears to her, this alone was a great step forward in Coci’s eyes and now she had something to work with. “No one understands because no one has been in your situation”, she approached the girl only a small space between them. “and trust is earned not giving without question and you are right in that, and to be untrusting of anyone. But I need you to understand why others find it hard to return any trust .. in you if you do not at least try”. And hopefully over time, Eyna will learn to trust again, or rather learn to trust for the first time.

Coci understood why the overseers had placed Eyna in restricted areas, she was a danger to those around her and they had to be protected as well as the girl. “Yes, you are in confinement for your sake as well as for others. I am sure you don’t want to cause more harm?”, Coci’s brow pulled inward, clearly thinking and contemplating a solution to this. And maybe it was time to give the first sign of trust to Eyna, a first step in this relationship.

“You are right, I have never had your experience, at least not in the manner you have experienced. And I shall tell you what I wish to do to try and help you. But I want you to understand that that is my intention, nothing hidden, and there is nothing for me to gain from this. And the last thing I would want to do is destroy whatever you are. What I do want to do is to form a set of exercises that will unlock what it is that ‘traps’ you. Release those memories which will be painful to you, but in the process will give you your freedom of mind. And give you control back, or maybe control for the first time. And if there is anything you do not want, then we find another way. We work together not against one another”.

She walked toward the edge of the platform on which they stood, looking out over the surrounding gardens and to the peaks of the temple in the distance, she had turned her back to Eyna, if the girl was to attack again Coci would sense it but at this point there seemed to be no build up of fear and anger that would trigger it. There was, however, a natural fear that stemmed from her frustration that did not threaten in any way. It was normal.

“Would you be happy to leave this, ‘cell’ for another that is bigger again? .. to have the freedom of a planet”. She turned back to face Eyna. “I want you to think about this hard, take your time, but I would be willing to take you to my home, work with me in the Temple there .. but you will be free to go where you wish. It is a trust I am willing to give you, if you will except it”.

[member="Eyna"]​

 

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]

There was a moment of silence, or so it felt like. Eyna’s lips thinned in a quiet understanding for her situation, but that didn’t make her feel any less bothered by it. The question was whether she wanted to hurt anyone or not. The girl lowered her head and shook it before she looked up again. Coci explained her plan and Eyna listened. It wasn’t easy to buy what the Master was saying, but for her own sake the girl was willing to at the very least listen.

It seemed Coci was honest, yet that one voice at the back of Eyna’s mind didn’t want her to listen. But perhaps that was what trust was, not listening to the voice that told her to push away. It went against everything she had learned and taught herself, but the promise of being free from this affliction was something she couldn’t keep from considering.

… Wait, was she this foolish? Would she give up her own freedom for this? Then again, what freedom? What did she even have to her name beyond the robes on her shoulders? Not even those were her own. Eyna owned nothing and to some extent she knew that she was nothing. She had her few moments of clarity that she could remember. That was it.

The offer given was to leave. Coci got a surprised glance from Eyna. A planet was harder to see as a space for confinement, but why would she do this? The girl took a step closer towards Coci.

“What would you get out of that?” She asked, not quite trusting Coci yet quite clearly getting closer to the idea of it. “I… Don’t have anything to offer.”

“I want to.” She said, letting in another hestitant inhale. “But how would I be able to repay that?”

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

The girl was strong willed, that was a good sign. It proved to Coci that Eyna had fighting power deep down even though the odds had been against her most of her life. The internal struggle that she has had to deal with, was now the driving force that might just break the control and hold of whoever had done this to her.

“I do not you to repay me, and like I have said, I have nothing I wish to gain from this .. other than for you to get the help you need. It is kind of what .. we do”. Avoiding the word Jedi.

Narrowing the gap between them and placing a hand gently on Eyna’s shoulder, “I shall be here on Kashyyyk one week before I return home, take that time to consider this thoughtfully. Both of us are taking a big leap of faith, we have only just met, and it will take time before we are both comfortable with each other in this process”. She dropped her hand and turned to look toward the Temple.

“Come, we shall walk back together and no doubt the overseer is getting anxious over you”. As they stepped down onto the grass lawn, “If you do decide to come with me, take a good look around as it will be a long while before you see green again”.

“But the decision is yours, and yours alone”.

[member="Eyna"]​

 

[Eyna]

[member="Coci Heavenshield"]

Those confused green eyes still tried to find some sort of rhyme or reason for this as they began to walk. Eyna knew then that she had a week to decide, and that up until that point she would need to remain within confinement along her designated temple areas. So how would she reach Master Heavenshield? And who was this we she talked about? Was there more to this? Were there people behind the scenes? Was this an attempt to find recruits to some other shady sect? Probably not, or so Eyna figured. Even if it was, the chance that Coci would be open and honest about it was most likely slim.

As they came back into view from the Overseer, the girl felt her gut sink. She liked Kashyyyk in comparison to Eliad. Not that it said much. The trip here had perhaps been a bit problematic, and no doubt any trip away from here would be as well. The overseer approached. There was a short handover and with it her heart sank. The countdown had started in the very moment that the metaphorical leash was handed back and with it she felt her shoulders sink, too.

“I will think on what you said, Master Heavenshield.” Eyna said with a lingering look of uncertainty. “For a week. At most.”

It was mostly to reassure herself there was time to think. Eyna had no ties to this place but that didn’t make the decision feel any smaller. She had already started to have her doubts on her stay here and the decision to come along. It was undoubtedly safer than Eliad. She would have been wandering aimlessly had she stayed there, but here…

She still had her outbursts. She still had a constant nip at the back of her mind telling her something was, and forever will be, wrong. Though she hid it, she always had a burn that lingered beneath her skin that told her that she didn’t belong. The trio had their goodbyes. Coci had somewhere else to be, as did Eyna.

The hours passed and exercise began again as the girl pondered what she was to do.

The peace did not last, however.

Saxons blared and fear spiked. Not just in her cell but across the temple grounds.Tunnel vision crept at the edges of Eyna’s vision as her nerves tangled up. Her heart pained as it sunk in her chest. Darkness shrouded the periphery of her vision before it enveloped her as a whole. The struggle was all in vain.

Once more, Eyna was gone.