The Only Fight

Chapter 1

All Ben knows is that he has to run.

The little boy's breathing is short, his heart racing, his hair falling about his face. The snow crunches and crumbles beneath his feet, the cold biting into his skin. The darkness threatens to take him into its consuming grasp, hold him tight and never let go.

Maybe he should let it.

He does not know how long he has been running, where he is now, or where he will end up. Nor does he know what he is running from. All there is is the act of running, and the fear that set it in motion.

Fear. Fear heightening his senses, making every stagnant shadow into patient monsters; waiting for him to come to close, come close so they can pick him up, swallow him whole.

He doesn't wait in return, doesn't wait to see if they're real; he assumes they are.

But nothing reaches out with bloody claws, nothing taunts him, or roars in his ears. The only sound in this snowy forest is his own frantic gasps for air—(but he doesn't feel like he's breathing)—and that is monstrous enough.

Ben falls to the ground. He tries to crawl, to get back up, but his legs refuse to answer his commands.

The darkness, at last, now that Ben is on the ground, now that he cannot escape, takes on form, and steps before him.

Ben is just a child, he will never win against the hosts of darkness. Never win.

Or at least, his mind repeats it, like some sick prayer; You're nothing.

The creature—no, the person—'s face is obscured, whether by a cloak, a mask, or his own blurred perception, is itself another unclarity.

Everything is a little off, a little unclear, like he's looking through the dusty viewfinder of his uncle's macrobinoculars. Like he's making it up as he goes along.

In the dim light Ben can't tell whether the cloak is brown or black.

There is a whole spectrum between those two colors.

A sound penetrates the shadows, and with it, a light.

The lightsaber gleams in the dark. It is not, however the warm, saving grace of lamplight come to save him from the surrounding black. Rather it gathers its energy from the dark around it, amplifies the shadows, and the terror they provide. It hums, a crackling, red-soaked lullaby. Like an escaped convict of the old world, singing to himself in an empty cave the words to an even emptier old imperial march, telling himself he will be king again.

Red. Black. White. One day, the only colors he'll see in.

Ben doesn't even have the strength, or time, to ask Who are you? What are you? What do you want with me?

It doesn't matter anyways. He knows, he knows exactly why this person has come: they have been hunting him down for a long time, and that lightsaber is about to break his too-fragile heart—the heart he hasn't had time to harden and protect yet.

The only thing he dares to do is shut his eyes, and catch a breath, hold it in his lungs, try to grasp tight enough it won't be stolen away.

"Ben," the shadow taunts with a deep, crackling, familiar, unfamiliar voice, and the figure is so tall ...or maybe Ben is just too young..."Oh poor little Ben," it speaks with mock-pity, "Who will save you now?"

The little boy tries to swallow, tries to think of something to say, his tongue and mind searching for one strand of hope reach out and grab with his words.

He has no weapon of his own. His words are his only sword. So he must choose the strongest ones.

So...what are the strongest words? Defiance? Emotion? Insults? Truths? Lies? Will he fight the shadows with light or darkness?