A/N: As of 20/05/12, chapters 2 and 4 have switched places, to avoid, as someone has so colorfully put it, a scarecrow at the reception desk. I had my reasons to start high, but will no longer treat my gentle readers to a headlong plunge into the darkest scenario, first thing into the series. And yes, brightly named Beacon is a much darker story than the ominous-sounding Monster.

He who slays monsters is by necessity more terrible than the monsters, isn't he? How else could the monsters fear him?

The word 'parade' had held no meaning for the four-year-old child. It was a word he was beginning to recognize, though, while terms like 'inauguration ceremony' and 'sector governor' stayed random strings of syllables that went straight over his head. Parade meant excitement, strange clothes, shoving crowds – even on his aunt's favorite balcony; meant countless new and wonderful, terrifying, fascinating sights and sounds.

The troops marching in flawless formation glittered in the sun and were therefore fascinating – but only very shortly. The walkers, in all their ominous majesty, were obviously "Dogs!" and triggered a somewhat heated discussion about the things such a large – and metal! – beast would eat, or not; and no, he could not have one, not even a small one, his mother was quite adamant on this. The flight of TIEs screaming overhead made the child cry at their first pass, but had him waving, with shrieks of delight, by the time they finally ascended back towards the stars.

When all this fierce splendor had passed on or come to a standstill, and the crowds grew silent, the little boy expected something even more wondrous to follow. He was extremely disappointed when a rather ordinary man on a nearby tribune began to talk and talk and simply wouldn't stop.

Desperate for something, anything, more interesting than the talking man, the four-year-old leaned forward as far as he could, while still firmly held by his mother's arms, and looked around. The afternoon sun was throwing long shadows all over the place, one of which was slowly encroaching on the tribune in front of the governmental palace. In fact, there was a piece of shadow at the back of the tribune already, the boy thought, until a sudden gust of wind set not only the banners hung from every available surface, but also the detached piece of shadow aflutter.

He looked closer. Something huge and ominous was standing there, a vaguely humanoid figure, tall and dark, with a black cloak billowing behind it like ebon wings. The large creature scared the little child.

"Is that a monster?" he asked in a frightened whisper, pointing at the ominous piece of shadow come alive.

His mother looked shocked and started sputtering, but his uncle Jufa, a man the boy rarely saw, laughed in an unfriendly way and said, "A monster? Damn sure, he's a monster – the monster to chase away all other monsters!"

It made perfect sense to the little boy. Monsters were scary, so it stood to reason that they were only afraid of something even scarier.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Highly overwrought but also tired out by all the excitement of the day, the child was sent to bed quite early in the evening. He knew better than to protest to his mother when she wore that particular expression, and the best he could wheedle out of his nanny was to be read from his favorite storybook in exchange for getting into his pajamas without a fight. Despite his insistence on the contrary, the four-year-old was asleep before the first story was half through.

He was awake again, on the other hand, an hour before midnight. The room was mostly dark, and the child clutched his favorite stuffed Wookiee closer to his chest. Whenever they visited his aunt and uncle, the family was accommodated in the same suit in a side-wing of the palace, so he had slept in this room before, but he didn't like it, at all. There were loads of shadowy niches and unfamiliar pieces of furniture that all seemed predestined to harbor monsters in the dark. His nanny was sleeping in the room, too, the little boy could even hear her soft snoring, but old Irem was patently useless against monsters, because she steadfastly ignored their very existence.

The child snuggled deeper under his covers, wishing he had his flashlight with him. Light being, after all, the only thing that monsters were afraid of.

Then he sat up with a start. That wasn't true, anymore, was it? Just this afternoon he had seen something – or someone? the child wasn't too sure about that – that even monsters found scary.

Before the monsters could divine his plan and snatch at him from underneath the bed – and before his nanny could wake up which would have ruined the plan just as thoroughly – the four-year old was out through the door and padding noiselessly on bare feet along the lighted corridor outside.

Faint music and laughter was wafting from the main wing and the little boy followed the sound. It didn't occur to him that 'the monster to chase away all other monsters' might not be found among the laughing revelers.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Before long, he ran into an unexpected obstacle, though. Stormtroopers were patrolling the hallway he had planned to follow, and while he was old enough to realize that they weren't snowmen (mysteriously come alive), as one of his playmates called them, he was also old enough to comprehend that the white-armored men would in all likelihood send him back to bed. He ducked into an ornate niche, frowning in thought.

The garden side! Unlike the balconies facing the public square in front of the palace, the balconies on the garden side were built in one continuous piece, partitioned only by elaborate screens. As he had found out at his last stay, the screens could be circumvented by squeezing through the balustrade – too ornate to provide much of a barrier for somebody his size – on one side, clamber past the partition while hanging to the outside of the railing, and slip back onto the balcony. His nanny had almost had a heart attack when she found him halfway through the balustrade, six storeys above the ground, and had strictly forbidden him to ever try that again. But she had said nothing about traveling from one balcony to the next, and anyways, these were special circumstances, the boy decided.

As he had hoped, there were no guards on the inner balconies, and so he made his way without incident towards the site of the great ballroom. He was just about to enter the last of the unlit balconies, when something in the shadows hissed at him.

The child froze.

There was a moment of silence, then another hiss, and then one of the shadows started to move towards him, red lights glowing in the dark. In his sudden fright, the little boy tried to back away, but there was nothing behind him but empty air. Clawing for a hold out of his reach, he fell backwards with a gasp, too shocked to even scream.

A firm grip stopped his fall, he was lifted over the balustrade and then a huge fist took hold of the front of his pajama. There was something backwards about that sequence of events, the child realized, but then all thoughts fled him, because the monster to chase away all other monsters was glaring down on him. His brilliant plan suddenly seemed much less so. What if the monster ate little boys, like the krayt dragons his nanny had told him about?

"I do not eat little boys," a voice so deep and close by, that he could feel it vibrate through his very bones, growled.

The boy gaped. The monster could read his mind!

"I can. But who taught you to call me a monster, boy?"

"Cool!" the four-year-old breathed. Then he remembered that he had been asked a question, and because his mother and his nanny had done their best to teach him manners, he tried to answer it correctly.

"Jufa said that you were the monster to chase away all other monsters, and I thought … Ithoughtyoucouldchaseawaythemonstersinmybedroom." Face to, uh, chest with the monster, it didn't sound like a great plan at all.

"Sorry, sir," he added prophylactically.

There was a really odd sound. Then a hiss. Then another odd sound, a bit like a muffled laugh and a hiss at the same time. And another hiss.

The hiss was not directed at him, the boy realized, it was just something the monster did all the time. Which made sense, because it was a scary sound, and you could never be certain that there were no other monsters hiding in the shadows, unless they were scared away constantly.

"Very well," the deep growl cut through his ruminations, "let's hunt some monsters."

And then the monster – it hadn't told him to call it something else, had it? – tucked the child securely under one arm – and jumped on top of the balustrade.

"Cool!" the four-year-old had barely time to think, let alone repeat aloud, before the tall figure jumped again, this time over the part of the partition that protruded beyond the balustrade. In this incredible manner, the length of the garden balconies were quickly navigated, and the boy barely remembered in time that his nanny was still sleeping in his room, before the monster's heavy step could wake her.

At his whispered warning, the black-gloved hand waved in a peculiar way in the direction of Irem's bed before the child was informed that, "She will not awaken until morning."

That detail taken care of, the monster put the boy down on his bed, before summoning something metallic to its hand and igniting a hissing red flame from it, longer than the four-year-old was tall. The child watched in open-mouthed amazement while the monster swung the crimson flame around the room, slicing through all the shadows that might have served as prospective hiding places for monsters. When it finally extinguished the flame and declared the room monster-free, for now and for all, the boy didn't doubt this statement for a second.

The black-gloved fist, almost as big as the four-year-old's head, reached for his forehead for a moment, its touch cool and surprisingly gentle.

"Sleep now, young one, and never be afraid of monsters in the dark again," the deep voice rumbled, and the child was asleep before he hit the pillow.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Many years later, old Irem would look back and pinpoint the day when the boy, she had raised more as her son than his own mother had, had become utterly fearless wherever darkness or strange creatures were involved, as the one when she had inexplicably woken to a faint smell of ozone. The ensuing stunts had cost her many a grey hair over the years.

Watching her former charge, now a young man, embark smilingly on a ship destined to explore the Unknown Regions, she wondered, not for the first time, what had given him the unshakable confidence.

Her only clue were some cryptic words, uttered about a decade ago and long since forgotten in all likelihood. Back then, the child had told her that the one thing, more terrible than any monster, was his friend.