Let the Light In

Chapter 8: Nihilism

Chapter 8: Nihilism

Rey wasn't sure exactly when she fell asleep, but it was somewhere past her fifth shift in the cockpit, and what was most probably her thirtieth holochess match against R2.

He didn't really cheat, but he was a droid and that was pretty close.

Rey had been awake for forty nine standard hours, despite Chewie's protests.

Even the droid had shown concern.

Now, however Rey was just not able to keep her eyes open and stave off wretched sleep anymore, nodding off slumped in the lounging chair that wrapped around the table.

She awoke in a bed, the room was dark, and there was a panicked din going on just outside. There Rey got up, and found that the stone-decorated room was very familiar, but couldn't remember from where, like knowing someone's face but not their name. The screaming outside sent freezing terror shooting through her, but she could not stop herself from running out the door, and into the ornate stone corridor.

Her heart stopped when she saw a tall, darkly cloaked man at the end of the corridor. There were shadowy figures running around, wailing, and the man cut one of them down as it passed him. Then he turned to her, but she didn't wait to see his face. She could feel him stalking her down as she ran, and she surprised herself by innately knowing where to run.

There was one word in her mind.

Courtyard.

Rey dodged left and right, avoiding all the other bodies that were flailing around her, with the presence of that haunting figure breathing down her neck. The courtyard's arch appeared in the distance, and she practically dove through to get out of the constricting tunnels.

Only, she landed on rough, wet gravel, and there was a man jeering at her in some language she did not understand. She tasted blood, and her chest burned. Someone kicked her hard in the ribs, and she sprawled to the side from the force, spitting blood onto the already black with rainwater ground.

There was a flanged durasteel staff lying not far from her outstretched hand. Her staff.

As another more feminine voice joined in the mockery, Rey scrambled the last few inches to the staff, and managed to whip around quick enough to hit the man under the jaw, and send him staggering. It was the same man as before, although his form, too, took on the ethereal quality of black smoke.

Rey clambered to her feet, and dropped into her second-nature defensive stance when the man recovered quickly, lifting his spiked mace in menace.

The woman laughed, and crossed her arms languidly as if anticipating a show. A slaughter.

The man lunged at her, and as his mace came crashing down on her raised staff, the courtyard ground crumbled beneath her, pain lancing across her chest and shoulder again, causing her left arm to go numb. Rey fell through stifling space, dust swirling around her and choking her. As the silt thickened, so she found herself disconcertingly no longer falling, but rising out of a swelling dune the sickly yellow colour she had come to know as Jakku's wastes.

She heard a little girl cry.

Rey heard herself cry, but has wildly as Rey looked, she could not find her five-or-so year old self, nor could she catch a glimpse of whomever had left her behind. Her family! All she wanted was a peek of her family.

But this was not to be.

Behind her, instead came what she knew from before.

That compellingly familiar voice, masked by the whisper it spoke in, "Stay here, I'll come back for you."