Raey did not like jungles.

The heat was oppressive, the wet air made him miserable, and plants grew so close together that even walking in a straight line was practically impossible. He kept his gaze shifting between LN's white-armored back and the uneven, green-covered ground, trying desperately not to slip and fall on every damp leaf he was forced to step on.

And the animals!

Scavengers on Jakku were dangerous, sure, but as long as you were careful and didn't wander around at night, you were going to be fine. Here, in this wild tangle of life, there were animals everywhere, and they weren't just mean-but-shy scavengers. Insects buzzed around Raey's head and bit his exposed arms and neck. Scaled lizards slunk around in the trees, hanging low from their long, hooked tails to grab at anything that passed below them. Once, Raey heard an animal squeal and looked in time to see a furred bird-creature caught in one such lizard's spiny claws, slowly but steadily pulled up towards the lizard's mouth despite frantic attempts to escape. He quickly looked away and added glances above him to his now-routinely shifting gaze.

LN didn't seem phased by any of it. Raey wondered what sort of training the First Order put their stormtroopers through that she could be dropped on a completely mysterious new world full of gross monsters and insects, and she could just march through it without a shudder or a second glance.

He was tempted to ask, but didn't. They already made too much noise – he wasn't going to add to it with chatter.

LN abruptly halted, raising a hand to stop Raey, too. He immediately crouched, drawing his stun baton, but nothing charged out of the underbrush at them. LN waited for a moment, then nodded towards Raey.

"We should be alright," she said quietly, "but be careful where you step. I think I heard one of those cat-beasts in the distance."

Raey followed her lead, their progress slowed but significantly quieter then before. LN kept pausing to listen every few minutes, and Raey quickly figured out the telltale signs when she was about to do that and stop right along with her. The roar LN had heard repeated itself a couple times, but always just on the edge of hearing.

Finally, after half an hour without hearing any roars, LN picked up the pace again. Her intensity seemed somewhat excessive to Raey, but at first he had set it aside as simply part of being a stormtrooper. After the not-so-close encounter with the jungle beast, however, he began to second-guess that.

She wanted to get away from the shuttle, but we're well away from it now. There is nowhere for us to go, so why is she still so intent on moving quickly when it could give us away to predators?

He considered the question slowly during the march. The humidity made his thoughts heavy and sluggish, but he could still tell there was something more behind LN's decisions then she was letting on.

The answer finally came to him when, for the hundredth time since leaving the shuttle, LN shot a quick glance over her shoulder. It was a look that began high, scanning the treetops, and arched down to land just behind Raey. She thought someone was following them. Not just anyone, but someone who scared her. Raey could think of only one explanation.

"That fighter... the pilot was a Knight of Ren, wasn't he?"

This question didn't carry far in the heavy air, but LN heard it perfectly well. Her straight shoulders stiffened, but she did not reply for what seemed like minutes.

"I... suspect so," she finally said, and nothing more. Raey had nothing to ask after that. Her tension told him enough.

He began glancing over his shoulder, too.

.

When night began to darken the jungle, LN decided they would "bunk down" beneath the spreading trunks of one of the smaller trees. The larger plants did not grow as well in the shadows beneath the trees, and Raey helped her stomp down the smaller vines and weeds in a circle big enough for their camp.

"I don't know how cold it can get on this planet, but we won't start a fire unless absolutely necessary," LN ordered. "Everything is too wet on this world – the smoke would give us away."

With no fire, no AT-AT, and no blankets, Raey didn't think it could really be called a "camp". LN declared she would stand watch for a few hours and wake Raey up to take over, then left to pace around their tree while Raey tried to fall asleep on pokey plants that made his back damp.

Despite the bugs, the constant dripping of water, the plants, all the ambient jungle misery, Raey finally did manage to fall asleep. But even then, he dreamt of the jungle. And darkness.

.

.

.

The man stood in a dark room lit with red, the far walls invisible except where they reflected the light. In front of him stood a throne... too large for a human... carved in stone and bathed in the red light so it seemed the only thing to really exist in this black chamber.

Someone else stood before the throne. They stood facing one another, shadowy figure and shadowy figure, and then the one nearest the throne turned. He, it, climbed the hundred shallow steps that led to that too-large seat, and then sat upon it. Even from below, it seemed the eyes of the one sitting on the throne lit up with a fierce fire, and all the lights in the room turned to fire, as well. Heat rose and seared into the skin of the one on the ground, and he raised his hand... his closed fist... the lightsaber in his hand.

The blue glow battled the fire, but it fought alone.

.

.

.

LN woke with the dawn. When the first ray of sunlight hit her eyelids, sleep fled.

She listened for a moment (a habit when waking in unknown situations), and heard only jungle ambiance and the soft breathing of a watchman fallen asleep on duty. It was safe to rise.

Raey was slumped against one of the trunks, his chin on his chest and his stun baton held loosely in his lap. LN carefully eased the baton out of his fingers, set it to the lowest setting, then jabbed the weapon into the scavenger's side.

Raey jerked up with a screech, blindly launching a fist towards LN in instinctive defense. She deflected the blow with her forearm and took a step back, giving Raey the chance to collect himself.

"What. Was. That?" he asked through gritted teeth, blinking hard at her and rubbing his side. She hefted the stun baton and let it fall into her other palm with a solid thump.

"That was your reward for sleeping on watch. Consider yourself lucky – in the corps, a soldier sleeping on duty could result in physical punishments, cut rations, and days of corrective reconditioning, or execution, depending on the results of the failure."

"I'm not a stormtrooper," Raey replied nastily, then slumped back against the tree with a slow groan. "But I get it. Sorry."

LN refused to be moved. "Tonight, do better." Then she tossed him the baton. "Come on, we should get moving again."

"Breakfast?"

"While we walk."

Something snapped in the jungle, a branch cracking that stood out among the slower, steadier sounds of insects and dripping dew. Raey froze, as he had become accustomed to doing, while LN listened carefully for any other auditory clues.

"Get the supplies," she whispered, her expression alarmed. "Hurry."

Raey scurried over to the little pile of standard-issue First Order packs and slung one, then another, over his shoulders. He picked up the last two, ready to hand them to LN, but the former stormtrooper still hadn't moved.

LN...?

She turned and took two quick steps over to him, grabbing the packs out of his hands. Without even a moment's pause, she kept walking, off into the jungle beyond their shelter tree.

"Move."

Raey hurried after her, looking over his shoulders for any sign of what had alarmed her. Nothing stood out, nothing out of place in the tangle of green, but he didn't doubt her for a second. Something about that sound had put him on edge, same as LN. He had a bad feeling about it.

Where are the animal noises?

The insects still buzzed around him, but he didn't see any lizards. The weird bird-things that lived in the trees were quiet.

A drop of water, neither cold nor warm, fell on the back of his neck, trickled down his spine. He had almost gotten used to getting dripped on the previous day, but now it made him start. LN looked over her shoulder almost constantly, and she even stumbled once when she missed an obvious fallen branch under her feet.

Raey stopped suddenly, and LN, looking back in his direction at that moment, noticed this and followed suit, freezing in place. His gaze was focused – she slowly turned forward again and followed his gaze up into the trees.

A dark figure, clad all in black, crouched on a tree limb directly above LN's intended path. He sat on his haunches, arms resting on his knees and hands clenched around some archaic weapon of war... some spiked hybrid of an ax and a spear. His face was hidden by his hood, pulled far forward so it cast everything but his chin and cruelly smiling mouth in deep shadow.

LN's heart began to race. Her hands tightened around her blaster, her one finger sliding off the guard onto the trigger itself.

He knows we've seen him. No lightsaber... an acolyte. He can't deflect blaster bolts like the Knights can, right? I can shoot him... I have to shoot him!

She sprang into movement, raising her blaster and firing off three quick shots before leaping to one side and opening up again from the imperfect cover of a large tangle of brush. The acolyte moved before she had even finished lifting the trigger from her first shot, rolling sideways along the branch as confidently as if it were solid ground. Her shots seared through the air beside him, and then as she raised her blaster over the bush to fire again, he threw his weapon into the soft ground, grabbed the branch, and let himself drop to the jungle floor.

"Run!" screamed LN to Raey, firing again. The acolyte didn't dodge this time; he ran forward towards them, leaping lightly over the fallen branches and creeping vines that littered the jungle floor as easily as a cat, and met the oncoming blaster fire with the broad, curved blade of his weapon. The laser bolts dissipated against the black metal, and despite the size of the halberd, the acolyte spun it around to meet every bolt as if it weighed nothing at all.

Had Raey already run for it? LN trusted the scavenger's survival instincts to kick in and put him out of her mind. She switched to secondary fire and began showering the acolyte in volleys of less powerful bolts, hoping to overwhelm him with the sheer number of shots. Her opponent didn't miss a beat in his approach – he merely jumped sideways, away from the new attack, and lunged forward into the underbrush. LN immediately ducked back down and ran, half-crouched, away from her former cover. She didn't see Raey, couldn't see the acolyte, and she dared not call out for the one for fear of attracting the other.

Just get away from here, she thought fiercely, as if Raey could somehow hear her anyway. Don't stop running.

She found a tree whose five trunks grew together fairly low to the ground and slid under them, rustling around in the weeds for a brief moment before settling down on her stomach, blaster held at the ready. She tried to steady her breathing, slow her heartbeats, but fear and battle had shaken her aim.

Come on, LN-2737, what would the rest of the squad think? she told herself fiercely, and clung to the imaginary disapproval to force herself to calm down.

Listen. Wait.

They had all done brief sniping sessions, though only a handful of troopers in her class had gone on to join the elite ranks of the sharpshooter. All the same, she let herself fall into the mindset she had nurtured ever since, that of the patient, still, ever-aware predator, watching without being seen.

What do you know about the enemy?

The standard strategy-formulation question, for once, did little to help her. This was no mere soldier or enemy pilot, this was an acolyte of the Knights of Ren. They were one step away from being the next generation of Sith, and that was a topic of whispered rumors and ancient myth rather then hard data. A myth was hunting her...

No. That man was flesh and blood. Human, most likely. That's a start.

She resisted the urge to raise her head over the weeds. The sounds of approach might be muffled, the enemy drawing near without being spotted, but moving was sure to betray her presence. She had to risk it. In this case, she was not the hunter, but the hunted.

Or... were they still after Raey?

The question made LN reconsider everything. Their hunter didn't know this was the planet the coordinates led to, but he did know Raey had those coordinates. He had followed Raey and LN to this point because he still wanted what Raey was carrying.

LN wasn't the hunter, or the hunted. Raey was.

She drew in a long breath, steeling herself for a sudden ambush, and pushed herself up on her elbows. Then rose to a crouch. Then, keeping a sharp eye out for any movement, she crept out of her hiding place.

There was no sign of the acolyte, or of Raey. LN retraced her steps to the place where the acolyte had ambushed them, still smoking from where wayward blaster fire hit wet plants, and began looking for tracks.

Raey had been right behind her... she stood where he had and looked for broken stems or crushed leaves, signs of a hasty flight. Nothing, except back the way they had come. She followed the trail, looking carefully on either side for a deviation that would indicate either Raey or his pursuer had gone another way.

No, not necessarily the acolyte. He could have traveled in the treetops with that inhuman agility.

The reminder made her stop briefly and look up, making sure the branches above her were empty. They were.

A sound, faint but distinct, broke the eerie almost-silence of the jungle. A cry of pain? LN broke into a run, heedless of the sound she was making and the risk of letting herself get lured into an ambush. As she sprinted recklessly down the trampled path, she began to hear the clanging of metal, and then another cry – frustration or pain.

There! Raey was dodging back and forth through the trunks of another tree, his stun baton sizzling with electricity in his hand, while the acolyte tried to get at him, stabbing through the gaps between trunks with his halberd. LN stopped abruptly, planting a foot against a rock to keep herself from sliding on the wet ground, and took quick but careful aim at the acolyte. Raey ducked between two of the bending trucks and the acolyte jumped sideways to cut him off, unknowingly putting his back to LN and her blaster.

Good thinking, Raey.

LN switched to primary fire and squeezed the trigger. Five bolts, each one right on the heels of the last, as fast as primary fire could accommodate.

Sorcery. It was the only explanation. The acolyte moved with reflexes no mortal should possess - launching into a smooth dive-roll to dodge the laser blasts - during the split second it took the first shot to fly the distance between shooter and target. LN tried to adjust her aim accordingly, but the acolyte was already moving again, running towards her.

A moment's hesitation, an opportunity! The acolyte's cloak caught on something and his run was halted, and LN opened fire again. At the same moment, Raey jumped out of his feeble cover and charged the acolyte, his stun baton almost glowing from the prepared charge.

Those batons aren't supposed to do that, flashed through LN's mind, but the thought was short-lived. Her blaster was wrenched violently out of her hands and flew upwards, smacking her in the face so hard she felt her nose crack. As she fell back, hands flying to her bleeding face, she saw Raey knocked backwards by some unseen blow, slamming against the nearest tree trunk.

The acolyte let his cloak fall to the ground. Through a haze of pain, LN saw evil yellow eyes examine her, dismiss her, then turn towards Raey. The acolyte raised his weapon, the spike at the end leveled towards the groaning scavenger.

"Oh, no, you don't," gasped LN, lowering a bloody hand to grab at her fallen blaster. She got her fingers around it and lifted it, but her hand was trembling so much it threw off her aim. The acolyte didn't even flinch in his brisk walk towards Raey as her shot went wide, flying past his shoulder into the jungle.

LN took a breath and held it. She fixed her eyes and steadied her aim, ignoring the shooting pain radiating from her broken nose. She pulled the trigger.

The acolyte's wrist spun, the long handle of his weapon flying up behind his back. The shot, perfectly aimed, was caught on the shaft, a target so narrow it would have taken computer-accuracy to align so quickly. The acolyte did pause this time, though, and looked over his shoulder at her. LN froze.

I am going to kill you slowly, that expression said. You will die, but not until your voice and spirit are broken from screaming.

The blaster fell from her suddenly numb fingers.

Good girl, traitor.

The acolyte thrust his weapon into the soft jungle soil, then reached down and grabbed Raey by the throat, hauling him to his feet. Raey tried to jab him with the stun baton; the acolyte deflected the attack, knocking Raey's arm away and then wrenching his wrist so he was forced to drop the baton.

The acolyte said something, but it was too quiet, too far away, for LN to hear. She could barely hear anything over the frantic pounding of her heart. She looked down at the blaster, but no ideas presented themselves to her. The acolyte couldn't be shot. She had no other weapons. Raey was choking, his windpipe crushed by the iron grip of the monster that was here to kill them.

LN swallowed blood and realized she had fallen to her knees. Her blaster lay before her, but she couldn't bring herself to raise it again.

By the Emperor... this is the end.

.

The world was fading out. Raey gasped for breath, struggling weakly in the enemy's grip, but nothing loosened it. Slowly, inevitably, it crushed him.

Help. It was his last frantic effort, the only thought he could manage without air. Help.

Through the roaring blood in his head, he still heard it begin. A faint, steady hum. In his failing mind, he thought of his vaporators at home. Then, a distant woman's voice cut through the haze.

Help has come.