It was still an hour till dawn when Tavvar woke to a sudden crashing. He lay still and tense, his eyes shut, listening to the continuing rumbling of whatever had fallen settling into place. A warning was prickling in his mind, sharp enough make the hairs on his neck stand up. He breathed out as slowly as he could, tried to reach out and grasp it, but the elusive darkness escaped him. Behind the curtain, Pavik was getting up, shuffling toward the entrance flap of the hut. Tavvar took a breath, felt around for his saber, swung off his cot, and jogged over. The night was suddenly still again, but as he listened, he became aware of one sound. The faint buzzing of a lightsaber.

Pavik turned toward him to speak, caught the sound too, and hurried to the shadowy back of the hut for his own saber. Tavvar cautiously peered out of the slit. In the harsh yellow glare of the lamppost, Ben Solo stood outside the ruins of his hut. He held his lighted saber, barely visible in the light, and was bent over, leaning on his knee with his off hand and staring at the ground. A nightmare, maybe? Just a month before he'd slashed a hole in his wall and roused half the camp with his yelling before he even woke up. It must have quite a dream to get him to take down his whole hut. Tavvar wanted to laugh, but the feeling of darkness still crept through him. He hadn't felt like this last time. Maybe Ben had seen the dark presence Tavvar could feel.

Pavik slid up next to Tavvar. They stood still, frozen with that heavy, spreading fear, as the seconds stretched out. Then Ben straightened, a deep breath whistling through his teeth. He stood for a moment, straightening, the light burning on his back, his face in shadow. He switched his saber off, and Tavvar let out the breath he was holding and opened the flap a bit more, craning his neck to look at the ruins of the hut.

In that moment Ben's saber buzzed on again, almost invisible in the glare. From his throat came a growl. Tavvar knew the sound well, he and the others had laughed at it often enough, but in the darkness, it sounded fierce, menacing. On instinct, he pushed the button on his own saber.

Just as he did so, Ben whipped around. He strode to the hut next to Tavvar and Pavik's, where the girls in their group lived, yanked down the still cloth covering the doorway, and ducked inside. There was an sizzling sound for an instant before a short scream drowned it out.

Tavvar stood, frozen for an instant. Then he ran. He turned out of the doorway, stumbling into Pavik in his haste, and set out straight across the field. He ran faster than he had ever run before, saber waving precariously in his pumping hand, weeds slapping at his knees, one thought in his mind.

"Master Luke…"

Another scream, longer this time, and now the crackling hum of saber on saber, twice, then silence. One instant of silence. Then a dozen voices at once, shrieking in terror, calling each other's names, and over and over again,

"Master Luke…Master Luke…"

Another scream, high and sobbing. But then another voice, stronger and clearer, calling Ben's name. Savan, of course. How he forgotten? Tavvar jogged to a halt and turned around, letting out a ragged breath of relief. She was a month away from being a knight. She'd take Ben down. He listened to the quick clashes of their sabers, wondering if he should go back and help. Could he really do more than get in the way? But then the clashes stopped. Savan fell without a sound into a circle of lamplight. A second later little Toryl, cowering against Savan's hut, fell in two pieces.

Tavvar ran. He hit a root and almost fell but he kept looking back, staring at the bodies in the cold light. He was still looking back when he saw the Viera, Toryl's twin, staggering toward him as she too looked back. Ben stepped out from behind Savan's hut, and Tavvar willed himself to go back, he really did, but his feet kept running and the saber burned blue through Viera's chest before he turned again toward the temple.

Tavvar collided with Pavik just as he made the arched entrance. He started to fall backward but Pavik jerked him up, bouncing on his thin bending legs.

"He's not in his quarters," Pavik babbled, grabbing at Tavvar's shirt. "He's not there. He's not there..." Tavvar shoved him off and turned down the corridor to the left, screaming,

"Master Luke! Master Luke!"

The temple echoed with the cries, as everyone who reached it scattered down the halls like eskrats before a speeder. He ran into Pavik again, in the back of the echoing first hall.

"We've got to rush him," Pavik said in a harsh, jumping whisper. "You, me, any of the others. We can hold him off the rest of the real younglings until Luke comes."

Tavvar nodded once, hard and sharp, trying not to wonder if there were any of those left, and tried to release his tension, breathing deeply. Pavik scurried over to Thula, who was crouched behind a pillar. Tavvar closed his eyes, reached out to the Force, and turned around.

Ben was walking through the moonlit square at the door. In the dim light he seemed a shapeless, towering shadow. Tavvar caught his eyes, and all across the hall Ben held them. They burned brighter than his shining face. To his left and right he heard the Pavik and Thula's shrill yells, faint against the pounding in his ears, and saw them rush past him. Almost without thought, he followed.

They struck together, Thula swinging low, Pavik high. Ben leapt back, but they were quick too, on him again, and as he took an instant to push Thula skidding along the floor to thud into the wall he didn't quite catch Pavik's next blow. It glanced off his left arm even as he deflected it and Ben gave a growling scream. Just as Tavvar dashed up he ducked under Pavik's next attack, stabbing into his stomach and ripping straight up through his throat. Pavik fell and rage burned through Tavvar as he swung his saber down. Twice he parried and twice Ben did. Then Ben bore down on him, and the saber flicked quicker than a thought, and something came white hot down through his right shoulder and again into his stomach.

For a second there was nothing. Then everything came rushing back and he realized he had been screaming and that and somehow, he had wound up across the hall, shoved up against a pillar. The lights in the walls were burning so bright and red and he was burning and not screaming any more. His breath came in cold and he could see again but everything was fuzzy and so far away.

Something slid whistling across the floor toward Thula. Ben's hand was out, holding her pinned in the air against the wall, and with a flick of his other wrist he sent the lightsaber away from her again, skipping across the floor. He walked slowly toward her until his hand was on her neck, and his voice was low and harsh, but Tavvar heard every word.

"I have felt the darkness within you," He said. "It grows, and it shrinks, and you put it down, but it comes back, it always comes back." Thula's leg was spasming helplessly against the wall.

"It will never leave you. It will grow, and they will see it and they will hunt you down like an animal. Everyone here would have hunted you down!" His voice echoed through the hall. "Come with me and be free. You will be strong in the dark side."

"No," Thula whispered. "No."

Her left hand flew up, pinned to the wall. Tavvar could hear her gasping fast and loud. With a lightning flick, Ben cut off the two far fingers. Thula shrieked, and her gasping turned into whimpering. Ben dropped her in a heap against the wall.

"Come with me," He repeated. "There is nothing else for you."

Thula did not move. The seconds stretched out, and all sound seemed to fade away. Suddenly she raised her head.

"No," She said. "I…" Ben's saber was through her neck before she could say another word. She dropped to the side with her eyes and mouth still open, and Ben stalked off without a backward glance, leaving Tavvar with the dead.

The lights blazed brighter and hotter as the fires in Tavvar were cooling and the pain was pulsing with every heartbeat as the blood oozed and squired through the cracks in the burns in his stomach and the shoulder where his arm should have been. The lights kept growing all around and somewhere in the distance above his own moaning breathing the screaming began again.

"Luke… Luke…."

Was he saying it out loud? The screams came again and again, and the lights and the pain got brighter and brighter and he couldn't bear it, he couldn't, he couldn't…

Suddenly he heard a voice close by, loud and hysterical.

"Yes! Damn Luke! Damn them all!"

"They were afraid of us," Said another. "And they were right." It laughed a high, shaking laugh that seemed to go on and on as three pairs of feet, the speakers and another, went by Tavvar sprawled at the base of the pillar. They reached the doorway and lit the darkness outside for a moment with the torches they carried, and then they were gone.

He was alone. His eyes fell shut and the Force was twisting all around him in the dark and it was whispering things in the dark, and suddenly everything was light, all around him, the ceiling and the walls, burning right through his eyelids, and his throat was burning, and his chest was burning, and he thought Luke, please… and the Force pulled him under and everything was gone.

Liked it? Hated it? Let me know in a review!