It smelled of excrement in the first building they entered.

Even then, however, and even with the feverish glow that permeated the sagging building's interior, being out of the wind—whose sharp fingers never once ceased their irritating plucking of clothing, skin, and hair alike—was a welcome relief. Lyrian stepped lightly across the dirt floor, which was noticeably clear of any of the black crystals from outside, and watched as Cara marched to the squat, rectangular desk at the far end of the establishment. It was the only kind of structure in the building, except for the light fixture screwed into the ceiling and the two wide windows on either side of the single room.

Cara rapped on the desk's surface, eliciting a plume of dust.

"Hey, you," Cara barked, peering at someone or something Lyrian couldn't see from the other side of the counter. An unintelligible garble erupted not a half second later, and Lyrian jumped, though she chided herself immediately for such a foolish reaction when the perpetrator emerged from his hiding place.

He was a pallid creature who almost seemed to have been stretched bodily by the legs, which were jointed much like an insect's. His eyes were small and high on his skull, bordered by drooping folds of skin that merged into a curious star-shaped head—which in turn culminated at the bottom in a wide cleft chin. Coupled with the general atmosphere of the place and the way the creature trembled so violently as he looked into Cara's eyes, the situation was almost comical.

Lyrian let out a giggle at almost the same time as the Child shrieked in excitement, which earned them both a beady glare from the creature. Lyrian knew she deserved it, but even then it didn't completely quell the giddy energy that rose up within her. She attributed it once more to her confusion and impending death sentence.

"We need a map," Cara said, shouldering the large gun she had chosen from the Mandalorian's cabinet. "We heard you could give us one?"

The creature, still trembling, nodded with his entire body and then moved choppily behind the counter, presumably to retrieve the requested map. It was at that exact moment that the first vision—arrayed in a sequence of disjointed three-dimensional images and sensations—exploded across the back of Lyrian's eyelids.

The first image was a snapshot of Lyrian and her three companions descending into the Crater. But Lyrian knew with the same kind of otherworldly knowledge that lent her her visions, that she was seeing herself from the perspective of an enemy—or several enemies, actually. Enemies who were hunting them. Enemies who wanted more than a mere bounty.

The second image was, again, from the perspective of their unknown enemies, but now they were gathered several hundred feet away from the building Lyrian, Cara, and the Child were currently standing in. Lyrian knew their enemies were armed, were waiting, were prepared.

The third image was from Lyrian's point of view. She was standing inside the building, staring at the doorway, poised, expecting something, and then—

A boom that shook the ground beneath her feet and rattled every fiber of the building.

Fire, rushing in behind the blast, consuming or stripping everything in its path.

Pain in her head and in her chest and in her legs and her arms and everywhere.

And the Cara, Lyrian—and the Child—were gone. Dead. Killed in the explosion.

The vision dissipated, and Lyrian looked down at the Child with a staccato beat pounding in her chest. The Child's eyes were closed and, his tiny claws were resting lightly against the bare skin of her hand. He was sensing what she had seen, she knew, and he was probing, assessing. Maybe he was even trying to help her, as he had when she saw the nightmare-vision.

Lyrian knew it didn't matter if he knew what she had seen, however. He was going to die. She was going to die. Her visions had always come true—had always revealed a sliver of the future that had inevitably come to pass.

But even as the panicky desperation clawed its way into her throat, she knew she couldn't let these unseen enemies kill the Child. She understood, with a sudden clarity that reached far beyond her, that she would never let that happen as long as there was even the smallest chance she could prevent it. At the very least, she would die trying to save him.

He was so much more than her. He had power she had never known existed. He had united two powerful warriors to fight on his behalf—for what, she still did not know—and reached into Lyrian's darkest nightmare to save her.

He was a baby.

He was still innocent.

He was everything that she was no longer.

And he was going to die because she had forced the Mandalorian's hand, practically encouraged him to return her to her parents.

So, Lyrian did something that railed against every instinct she had ever held in high regard. She did something that poured breath into her lungs once more and forced her to move in a situation she would have normally frozen in fear at the thought of. Because she didn't have time to hesitate, to plan, to think.

She shoved the Child toward Cara, who had noticed the way she had gone stock-still, rigid with the power coursing through her.

"Take him! They're coming for him," she breathed, not able to look anywhere but at the door she was about to rush out of.

Lyrian turned as soon as the Child passed into Cara's hands—his outstretched hand a plea she didn't quite understand—and rushed out of the door, sprinting, knowing that she would run directly into the enemies whose presence she had sensed in the vision.

And she did.

She collided with a cloaked figure not ten strides away from the building, a burly creature who had been crouched just to the side of a jutting boulder, aiming what appeared to be a type of fission cannon at the building Lyrian had just left. She hit him and bounced backward, but not without procuring a sharp gasp of surprise and breathlessness from the cloaked figure.

"That's one of them!" she heard dimly as she managed to clear the remnants of the impact from her head and turn to run away.

But the figure she had hit snatched her by the collar with his free hand and held her up at eye level. She made out two dark slits of eyes under the edge of the hood, and then she was ramming her foot into his face, falling to the ground, scrambling and then sprinting away—away from the building, away from the future she had made possible.

The second vision hit, then, ramming into her consciousness and sending her to her knees, breathless.

It was a vision of fire, but it was different than before. This time, she saw herself as if from the perspective of someone standing at a distance, watching helplessly, watching with fear swelling in his every breath. She was seeing herself through the eyes of the Child. She didn't know how, but she was. They were connected - she and the Child - and only now, at what could be the end of their lives, did she realize that their connection went much deeper than the understanding the Child had extended to her back in the Mandalorian's ship.

Now, she watched as three cloaked creatures—enemies, like the one she had run into—stumbled towards her, where she kneeled in the sea of black glass. They were reeling, teetering as if drunk or dizzy or confused.

One of the enemies raised his weapon, pointed it loosely at Lyrian's exposed back, stumbled again—

The Child whose eyes she was viewing the vision through stiffened, a spike of alarm piercing his chest, mingled with something else—

And then the vision fell away.

A concussive blast erupted all around Lyrian, transforming everything into a progression of pressure, pain, and heat as fire sprouted from the blast's site of impact. There was ringing in her ears and pain all over her body and black glass splintering all around her—

She knew she had fallen, but she couldn't hear anything but a high-pitched ring, the swift tha-dump, tha-dump of her own blood rushing throughout her entire body. There was glass pressed into her cheek, her forehead, and her neck. She was lying down and something was burning, curling itself into plumes of acrid smoke, but she couldn't really see anything except for the colored sky swirling above her.

But she had altered the course of the future, had she not?

The building had not been destroyed by the enemies.

The enemies had fired at her. They had not landed a direct hit, but they had still fired at her. They had not fired at the building. They had not -

Lyrian slipped into a new kind of blackness, then, and for the first time since she had arrived on Toong'L, all was quiet.

A/N: *grins*

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light."

Ephesians 5:8