Xila's Climb

Blue fire danced across her black skin as she stared down the mighty mountain ranges of Bovax 6 with murderous intent. Blood-red irises carefully calculated the cliff-side route she had to take in order to safely accomplish her goal.

She had tracked the giant Jedi and his group of fifteen from the ice-planet, Teqol, which hid among dead stars at the opposite end of the galaxy.

Her X-70B Phantom star ship had run out of fuel once she came out of light-speed, causing her to crash land in the planet’s infamous sinking, desert sands. She was barely able to escape the ship before it was completely devoured by the golden black-hole.

Her trusty asteroid droid was less fortunate. In her mind, the droid fulfilled its purpose, which meant that she didn’t need to risk her own life to save it.

She stepped away from the crash, and found solid ground where she oversaw the sinking of the evidence of her arrival. The crash wasn’t intended, but the location of the crash turned out to be perfect. No one would know she was here.

She thought about that fact for a long moment. She had a brilliant mind along with many ruthless years engaging in militant, covert operations as part of a Jedi-hunting death squad.

The thought of dead Jedi made her basilisk-shaped face snarl with pleasure, exposing her vertically split black tongue and double-rowed teeth with inch-long, yellow fangs. The skin on her face was a bright crimson, with bold yellow tattoos adoring her forehead and cheeks.

The symbols engraved into her skin were sacred and unspoken. Only those of the true faith knew about the power of the symbols, and what they truly meant.

Those not of the true faith, knew only little, but it was always enough. The symbols meant death.

Her eyes were bewitching and prismatic, yet cold and unforgiving, and she was bald. Her exotic beauty was evenly matched with insidious monstrosity, a combination which required her to become accurate and deadly.

She was dressed in a black tunic, with a heavy hood, black Bantha-skin pants and thick black boots. Two, red light-sabers were quietly nestled beneath the tunic, patiently waiting their chance to melt flesh and slice through another bone. She caressed their hilts with her long fingers, donned the hood, took in a deep breath, and visualized her task with a sinister smile.

The sith way-finder radiated with ravenous hunger in the palms of her tattooed hands, indicating that she was close. This particular way-finder was unlike any of the other hyperspatial lodestones, which have been used to guide, and allow safe passage through the uncharted sectors of space – to the shrouded planet Exegol, where the coveted secrets of the sith waited to be discover by those who were deemed worthy.

This one however, was unique in its nature and construction. Instead of leading its owner to Exegol, it fed off the deepest, and darkest desires that grotesquely festered in the bowels of the person’s heart.

The pyramid-shaped device was made from emerald, Cybotaro waxen glass with a thick, Kathol resin housing, keeping the glass in place. It was etched straight, red lines and one large circular line indicating the routes needed to navigate the obstacles of deep space.

Before she embarked on her bloody crusade, she had murdered her master who had deemed her unworthy of handling a sith way-finder. Her master had claimed that she was too reckless, too motivated by her impulses and her unsatisfiable lust for blood – rather than the clairvoyance needed to appreciate the larger endgame.

This old memory made her hiss with vile disgust, causing her to spit the thought out onto the hot sand beneath her feet. She was glad she had killed her master. He had taught her everything he had known, which in her eyes, made his use to her fulfilled.

She pushed those dark memories to the back of her mind with a coarse grunt, and focused back to the mountains which stood in her way. She carefully returned the way-finder back into its weathered wrappings, then tucked it inside of the leather pack strapped to her shoulders.

On Bovax 6, the days were short and the nights were long. Above her head, she watched as the sun raced to set itself behind the stoney peaks. She was running low on time, and had much to do.

The peak in front of her was at least twenty-thousand feet high. Luckily, she only needed to climb half of that height to reach the cavernous tunnel that cut straight through to the other side.

According to the last GPS ping of the Jedi, he and his group had landed at the base of the mountain where the mouth of the tunnel ended. All she needed to do was make it to the entrance with haste, and without injury.

Unfortunately for the Jedi, she was an experienced climber.

Growing up as an orphan to a long-lost tribe on Endor, the Kota clan, required her to become skilled at climbing, tracking, hunting, and swimming. She had conquered peaks three times this height at the impossible age of fourteen.

Now, twenty years later, her thirty-four year old muscles and joints still ached to stretch and clench as she hung, swung and scaled enormous walls of rock. As she placed flesh to cold stone, her belly growled with blood-lust and her vision flared with rage.

She began to climb.