The Knights of Ren (Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens FanFiction)

Chapter 9: The Dark Side

Moraband, a scorched and desolate place where life had long since ceased in its survival. Covered by the endless seas of red sand, and fields of blackened earth, there was a cold that consumed it, one colder than even the blackened gaze of Snoke and the void. Jagged mountains covered the bleak horizon, daring to reach high enough to ravish the crimson skies that now eternally bled in memory of all that had been lost on its surface. The toll of over a thousand wars had left the planet only a scarred memory of what it had once been. Across the enduring emptiness, the screams of all those lost could almost be heard beneath the howling of the winds.

Ben Solo was now truly alone, left to his trials on the burned remnants of the former Sith home world of Moraband, the Force was but a whisper amongst the red shifting shadows. The Finalizer hovered somewhere in the shrouded vault of stars that sat beyond the scarlet haze, however until his task was finished, it would remain but a memory. Hardly able to see, each step into the unknown felt more difficult than the next. The Fallen Padawan had heard tales of Moraband only from the Jedi, of the horrors that had taken place on the once bountiful planet in the name of the Sith and all they had stood for. Now their legacy endured as only ash and brimstone.

Upon the surface of Moraband, the call of the Dark Side was stronger than anywhere Ben had felt it before. Bitter anger birthed from all those who had lost battles, only fueled by the anger of the Sith that had won them. Malice for all of life, for the interconnection that bound all things within the Light, and reverence for the solitude of the dark. There was a contention that existed as only a whisper in the blackened red that had long since replaced the notes of life, a contention in the isolating silence that extinguished all things. In the face of the unshakeable divide within young Solo there came a surreal moment of peace. A feeling as if the teachings of the Jedi which still held him back from fulfilling his destiny could not reach him in this one place.

The shuttle that had dropped him off on the far side of the planet had long since returned to the Finalizer. Since its departure, Ben had only aimlessly wandered with no distinguishing direction. Moraband had no markers to separate one scorched valley from the next. Only a few mountains differed from the others before them, those that had been torn through by fallen starships, and others toppled after being ripped from their very roots. The rest was but an impenetrable vale of shadows and dust.

How long he had walked, Ben Solo could not have known. Between his exhaustion, and the lightless nature of the frontiers stretched out before him, it was difficult to tell what time even was in such a place. Whether it had already been hours, or only minutes, there was no way to tell. Even night and day held no hold over the red sands of Moraband. Only a blanketing feelings of perpetual suffering that reminded the fallen Padawan of the fear that drove him forward, of the legacy he had been born to preserve.

It was then that a whisper slipped through the shadows, one spoken by the very winds, "Jedi...you have no place here...servant of the Light...."

Ben Solo turned every direction he could but found only the emptiness.

"Be gone..." whispered the veiled voice, "...blood of Skywalker...."

"No!" he defiantly shouted back into the winds. "My task is set before me and none will turn me astray."

Still the whispers rippled from all directions as the winds began to shift directions, a thing no wind had ever done before, "He does not see...."

"He cannot see," replied another from the red.

"He has already failed," spoke the next.