The Razor Crest lurched to an abrupt stop upon the surface of whatever planet the Mandalorian had decided to refuel on.

Lyrian stopped midway through a sentence that had obviously failed to wholly capture the interest of both herself and the Child, who had long ago become more interested in trying to pull a hissing Pav's tail than listening to Lyrian. She glanced out of the rectangular entrance of the Mandalorian's bunskpace and wasn't sure if it was relief or disappointment that released the tension in her belly when she saw no hint of silver or black to indicate his presence outside. He had left the 'fresher and returned to the cockpit, it seemed, since she had resumed her storytelling.

She could admit now—after all that had happened over the course of the past day-and-a-half—that she was utterly confused. Confused, uncertain—neither states of mind were pleasing or even very familiar to her, but Lyrian had decided that admitting such a weakness might serve her better than pretending she wasn't confused at this point in her quest. What she didn't understand at the moment could be understood given time and an element of risk. What she thought she understood but did not, however, would only lead to a desperate scrabbling for control she had no way of possessing.

Her priority now was not determining where she or the Mandalorian stood in relation to one another anyway. It was formulating a plan of escape because all signs pointed to her being returned to the custody of her parents—and she knew with certainty that she would rather die then submit to their control again. Freedom, even if it was short-lived, was infinitely better than slavery. Kell's life and later "release from servitude" had proven that.

So, Lyrian told herself she was merely confused about whether or not to trust the Mandalorian as she slid out of his bunkspace and pulled on her shoes. She wasn't afraid, even though she guessed fear might benefit her more than confusion, and if she did not explore her own thoughts and weaseling emotions too much, she could also say that she was not slightly sad to leave the Child behind. She turned around once she had finished adjusting her shoes.

"Come, tisan. We can stretch our legs now."

The Child looked up from Pav, whom he had cornered and had been slowly advancing upon.

"Bah?" he inquired, the end of his monosyllable curving up in a way that could only be described as hopeful.

Lyrian grinned at him, an action that was become increasingly more frequent as she spent more time with the little green infant, and then reached her hands out to pull him away from her cranky pet.

"Yes," she said as he settled comfortably into the nook of her arm. "And you can see the Mandalorian as well."

Lyrian turned around just in time to see Cara jump down from the cockpit ladder. Whatever remnants of her grin that might have remained dissolved immediately as she recalled her earlier tense conversation with the woman.

"Mando said you're with me," Cara said, voice gruff.

Something cold and hard expanded in the pit of Lyrian's belly, and she found herself instinctively holding the Child closer to herself.

"W—are we not going to all be together?"

Cara, who had forwent looking at Lyrian while the girl spoke in favor of intently scanning the wall in front of her, stepped forward instead of answering immediately. She pressed a button on the wall and was rewarded with a hydraulic hiss as the entire panel slid away to reveal a fully-stocked cabinet of weapons. She hummed in satisfaction and looked at Lyrian.

"No."

Lyrian frowned at the ex-militant. She considered letting the matter go at that—her past experience with contesting any course of action adults had already planned informing her that punishment rather than understanding was more likely to follow such questioning—but then she decided she had nothing to lose. She knew they were traveling in the general direction of Thule. For all she knew, this could be Thule. The worst Cara or the Mandalorian could do would be to continue on to her self-proclaimed home planet, where they would fulfill the bounty her parents had put out for her—albeit, in a more ruthless manner than the one in which the two friends were currently pursuing it.

So, she used the word she had learned early on in life to avoid at nearly every cost:

"Why?"

Cara pulled something like a forked rifle out of the cabinet, inspected it, and then replaced it wordlessly.

"Because," the woman said slowly, still not looking at Lyrian. "That's what Mando wanted. And it's his life, his ship—he makes the plans right now."

Lyrian immediately sensed that there was more to Cara's weighted words, but she had received some semblance of an answer despite the disrespect she had shown, and that fact alone had given her a warm, pleasant rush. She wasn't going to tempt fate now. She knew that Cara was loyal to a fault to the Mandalorian—she had made that much clear in their conversation earlier—and their relationship was far outside her jurisdiction of concern. But knowing that there might have been some conflict ruminating between them could prove useful in her escape attempt should she receive the chance to make one.

Lyrian occupied herself for the next few minutes by bobbing up and down with the Child, murmuring snatches of Cheunh proverbs into the sweep of his large ears as she thought about what he course of action logically needed to look like. She had almost run out of rhyming recitations to offer the Child—scant as they were in her memory—when the Mandalorian emerged from above.

He clanged his way down the ladder and accepted the rifle Cara handed him from the weapons cabinet before turning toward Lyrian.

The girl thought of what he had witnessed earlier, when she had been playing with the Child, and she felt fingers of warmth brush across her cheeks once more. Lyrian had let her guard down and forgotten to listen for the Mandalorian's arrival—she had been acting as immature as the Child she had been seeking to entertain, and now her status as nothing but a youngling was no doubt cemented in the Mandalorian's head.

Her reputation—and the honor of her people—was likely to be forever sullied in his mind, and it was entirely her fault.

Not that it mattered now, she supposed, since he was delivering her to her parents and didn't seem to care one way or another what the Chiss species were like. And, she thought suddenly, even though the Mandalorian had seemed to care about her wellbeing earlier—when she had experienced the nightmare-vision—his façade of concern could just as easily be the result of some subconscious guilt over his plans to turn a child over to her death as it could be an actual display of affection.

Lyrian's eyebrows quirked down.

No, it was far more likely that it was a result of guilt, she reasoned. She hadn't thought of the Mandalorian's motivations in quite that way before, but it was entirely plausible that even a hardened bounty hunter would take some issue with deadly deals involving children. While the Chiss would never let their emotions interfere with whatever vocation they pursued, many other species might, and there was a possibility she could press that to her advantage in this case.

"Cara, you will take the Child. I'll refuel the ship and locate the contact," the Mandalorian said suddenly. Lyrian looked at him from the corner of her eyes even as she kept her head turned down to the Child, who had taken to chewing on her sleeve in a kind of glazed-eye daze.

"And what are we supposed to do in the meantime?" Cara said, smirking even through the steel in her voice. "Pose as tourists?"

The Mandalorian shook his head, seemingly unfazed by his friend's blatantly confrontational tone.

"Find some food. Get the kid something to play with, if you can."

Now, the Mandalorian cocked his head in Lyrian's direction, not waiting for Cara's reply to the rather domestic task he had assigned her.

"If you need to buy anything, you're free to do so," the Mandalorian said.

Lyrian felt a jolt in her chest.

"What?"

At the Mandalorian's side, Cara snorted.

"He means he'll buy you something to replace what you lost—or to get a change of clothes," she said, and Lyrian unwittingly curled her hands into fists at the implication behind the woman's words. It was true that she needed at least another tunic—the one she had on was ripped, scored with soot and grease from her time in the icy mountaintop community, soiled with something from nearly every planet she had been on since she had escaped her parent's merchant ship, she would have guessed. But again, she was confused.

What purpose could buying her supplies possibly serve in the Mandalorian's thinking?

Could she trust the Mandalorian and his seeming concern for her wellbeing?

Or should she dismiss it in favor of the overwhelming body of experiences that taught her that very few people in the galaxy had any reason to care for her wellbeing outside of what she could do for them? Should she dismiss it in favor of the guilt-theory she had formulated regarding the Mandalorian no more than a few seconds ago?

The latter was more compelling to Lyrian in many ways.

"Thank you," she said quietly, quieting the rush of her thoughts and looking down at the small green Child in her arms. He had twisted around to look at her as well, and she knew as his large dark eyes peered into her own that he could sense the conflict coursing through her. She let a soft smile ghost across her lips and ran the tip of one finger across his ear in a silent gesture of comfort that rose, unbidden, from somewhere deep inside her.

The Mandalorian cleared his throat and stepped past her, and then the world was back up to normal speed. The rush that inevitably accompanied visiting new places swelled within Lyrian's chest as she turned to face the loading ramp and tamped everything else down. She did not try to convince herself that there was no anxiety mingled with the excitement, even though her first instinct was to do so. Once again, the thought that she had nothing to lose anymore surfaced in her head. She might as well enjoy the adventure that lay before her before she was no longer physically able to.

"Welcome to Toong'L," the Mandalorian said as the landing ramp fell to the ground with a solid thud.

But his words were almost swept completely when the fiercest gust of wind Lyrian had ever experienced tore throughout the Razor Crest, slicing strands of Lyrian's hair into her own cheeks and the eliciting a concerned squeal from the infant in her lap as his ears whapped against Lyrian's chest. A pervasive roar accompanied the wind, vibrating at such an overwhelming frequency that Lyrian was honestly surprised she had not noticed its presence before the landing ramp was lowered.

She wasn't sure she was going to enjoy visiting Toong'L in the least—its close proximity to Thule aside.

They were climbing into the sagging belly of a dark, jagged bowl.

Lyrian followed closely behind the Mandalorian—Cara behind her and the Child still clutched securely to her chest—as the warrior led the way, his rifle extended straight and ominous above his head, a reminder of the vast destruction of which he was capable.

The planet itself was like nothing she had ever seen.

The sky that yawned above was in a constant state of evolution, neon colors that swirled in gyrating vortexes across its surface ranging from a putrid shade of yellow-green to the deepest tone of royal purple Lyrian had ever seen. Banks of clouds would sometimes appear without warning, having somehow managed to avoid being swept into the ever-circling spouts of color, and then they would wink out of existence just as quickly.

More striking than that, however, was the fact that they were carried to and fro by broad strokes of wind so powerful they actually threatened to upset Lyrian's balance. They were the source of the roar she had become aware of when the Razor Crest's door had opened, and she fought them the entire time they trekked down the boulder-studded curve of the Greater Toong'L Crater—which was the name the Mandalorian had assigned to their destination.

That name, despite being spoken in the same gray tone the man used for everything he said, had earned him a not-so-subtle snort of amusement from Cara, which Lyrian had almost been inclined to share until she had actually seen the Crater.

It was a pronounced pit in the earth that, given the brief glimpse of its rim she had seen, spanned miles upon miles in diameter. It was deep, as well, though not far from them were a few clusters of buildings as dark as the soil they rested upon. In fact, they were only betrayed as intentional structures by the smears of wan light that marked windows and doors. Beyond the buildings, Lyrian could make nothing out of the gloom except more black earth.

Even the Crater's overwhelming size and depth or the steep, roughhewn stone steps that she now tried to navigate, however, were not what truly made Lyrian's heart flutter behind her sternum. What gave her pause before they began her descent and what made her stick close to the protection she knew the Mandalorian could provide if he or his companions were threatened was the sight of the holes that unevenly marked the Crater's sloping sides.

"What are those holes?" Lyrian asked when they were halfway into the bowl.

It took her a few seconds after her unanswered question to realize that no sooner had she formed the words on her tongue than the wind had obliterated their sound. No one could hear her through the wind.

Lyrian repeated her question, raising her voice to a pitch that sounded like a disgraceful shriek in her own ears. The Child seemed to agree with her mental assessment, too, because she could feel him squirm in her grip.

She could tell the Mandalorian could hear her this time because he tilted his head to the side, though his sure footsteps never once faltered on the wind-scoured surface of the rocks. He reached up to his helmet—which Lyrian suddenly noticed was smeared with the multicolored reflections of the strange lights above his head—and tapped something near where she assumed his ear was.

"The holes are access points," he said, and Lyrian was slightly surprised to find that his voice, though more distorted than usual, was almost as loud as if the wind had not been there to interfere. "They lead to the underground network centered at the heart of the Crater."

Lyrian looked again at the holes. They were all different sizes and not arranged in any discernible pattern, but there was certainly a multitude of them. She estimated that within in any ten-square-foot area, there were at least three. She shivered as she considered what might be lurking in those holes and in the winding tunnels whose existence the Mandalorian's words had implied.

And then she had a worse thought.

"Are we going inside the holes?"

She looked at the buildings that were slowly growing closer to them, which seemed much more appealing even in their dilapidation than they had when she had first laid eyes on them.

"Yes."

Lyrian swallowed, and she could not find any more relevant words as they continued into the Crater. The Child in her arms would wiggle and squeeze his little claws tighter on her arm occasionally, no doubt trying to discern why he could not hear his own warbles, so Lyrian focused on trying to hear even the barest hint of one of his soothing coos as they continued.

She didn't hear a single one, even after the lip of the Crater had stretched high enough that she could never hope to see the Razor Crest perched near it and even after her boots crunched down upon the ground at the bottom of the Crater.

She knelt and inspected the black earth as the wind howled incessantly above and all around her, everywhere at once and yet never in any particular place.

"This is glass!" Lyrian breathed when she had taken up a piece of the crystallized soil and held it delicately between her fingers. It shimmered, streaks of delicate black woven so tightly throughout the crystalline structure that the entire piece seemed to be a fragment of the night sky itself.

She inhaled sharply when the Mandalorian appeared suddenly beside her and swiped the piece of glass out of her grasp. She gazed into his blank helmet, hand curling the Child more snugly into the crook of her arm.

"Don't touch anything with your bare skin if you can help it," the Mandalorian said lowly, close enough that even without the higher level of distortion his helmet had applied earlier, his voice was clear enough to understand clearly.

"The entire planet is poisoned."

Lyrian pulled away from the Mandalorian, not able to resist the urge to look at her bare fingers, which were smudged ever so slightly with a black powder.

"How is it poisoned?" she asked when the Mandalorian had resumed walking, moving closer to the clustered buildings.

And, she wondered, how had she not heard of Toong'L before? She had not lived on Thule for very long—or very regularly—but surely she would have heard of a planet that was poisoned even to its very core.

"Two comets struck this planet's surface, many years ago. This crater was the result of one impact. The comets are still stuck deep under Toong'L's skin, and whatever poison was on their surface still spreads there."

There was a pause as Lyrian processed this, and then he spoke again.

"That's the rumor, anyway."

They walked on in silence after that until the Mandalorian reached the first building. He appeared to scan its surface, which was incongruous and which Lyrian couldn't pinpoint the exact composition of. He turned to his companions.

"You should find a map inside. It will tell you which holes are shops and which are to be avoided—the shops should all have some kind of holographic marker outside of them. You know what to do."

Cara stepped forward and answered loudly to be heard over the wind, which still roared unceasingly around them.

"Right. Get in, get what we need, get out as quickly as possible. Same goes for you, Mando."

The Mandalorian nodded.

"If I'm not back here in approximately half an hour, return to the ship and move into orbit. I'll contact you as soon as possible…"

Here the Mandalorian paused, and Lyrian as well as Cara could sense the unspoken corollary to his words: if I'm still alive.

Lyrian tugged her hood down over her head even though she knew by now that the wind would rip it off in a few seconds anyway.

"What are you going to do?" Lyrian asked, the words tumbling out one after another. She tried to make them sound measured even though she hadn't really wanted to speak in the first place and didn't know why it mattered that she knew what the Mandalorian's errand was. Improvisation was proving to be the best tactic when it came to confronting her confusion around the Mandalorian, it seemed, so she decided to embrace it. For all her efforts, it was becoming apparent that she couldn't control anything but that in the first place.

"I'm going to locate others from my Tribe," he said.

Lyrian considered his reply and stored it away. It was information that, once again, might prove useful in the future.

The Mandalorian reached out a gloved hand to the Child in Lyrian's arms, and the little one stretched to grasp it eagerly. He was probably glad, Lyrian thought, to have something familiar in such an unfamiliar and frightening landscape. She felt him coo in her arms.

"Lyrian, I want you to watch over the kid," the Mandalorian said quietly, and his words were made choppy enough by the wind that Lyrian almost asked him to repeat his request. She thought better of it—knowing she had heard him correctly—when Cara shifted uneasily behind her. Obviously, the woman hadn't expected this either.

Lyrian could think of several reasons the Mandalorian might choose to entrust the Child to her care—and she wasn't sure what the implications of any of them were, really. She only knew that even if his decision was intended to discourage any daring escapes he might have sensed her concocting, she felt a jarring sense of relief at the idea that she wouldn't have to surrender the warm bundle of innocence that was in her arms to anyone else until they left the planet. She chose to dwell on that sensation, and responded to her surprise with what seemed to her to be all the tact she had been lacking for the past few days:

"I won't let anything happen to him."

She almost expected the Mandalorian to say something in response—for his posture tightened and he leaned forward as if to combat the wind's word-thieving tendencies—but he seemed to think better of it, and with a final terse nod, he moved toward a dark knot of holes in the direction from which they had come.

Lyrian and Cara watched him go and finally disappear into one of the mouth-like entrances—which swallowed him in its inky darkness without hesitation—and then Cara strode past her.

"Come on," she said. "The sooner we get off this hunk of rock, the better—for everybody."

A/N: Hey again! I hope this new chapter finds you well...and ready for the holiday season to kick itself into high gear! :)

This chapter and the next weren't actually supposed to be separated, but I have problems when it comes to dialogue/description balance (this isn't really news to you all, though, right? XD), so I got a little carried away. SO. MERRY CHRISTMAS. Two brand-new chapters with a nice dose of strange landscapes and lots of wind because wind can be ScArY. Also: important plot setup. o_O

I also wanted to take some space to send a massive, well-deserved THANK YOU to every single person who has taken the time to read, favorite, review, and follow this fic. Your support is incredibly appreciated - and to all those Guests out there who took the time to make me grin with their encouraging comments...you are AmAzInG! It's kind of sad that I have no way to respond to your comment and let you know just how appreciated your support is, so hopefully you'll read this and know anyway. ;)

Merry Christmas, everyone! I love y'all.

I have spoken. ;)

~Roanoke

"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."

John 1:4-5