Beneath a white mountain lies a great expanse. Rey, still in disbelief, is sitting on a glass stone formation under an opal arch. Towering over her is Luke’s X-Wing- somewhat worn, but still in working condition. She has a blanket huddled over her to dry herself up. From the distance, Luke walks over and offers her some strange plant to eat. She eyes it hesitantly, but eventually decides to take it. As Rey is eating, Luke speaks:

“I never expected to see you here.”

Rey responds, “I was so sure you were gone. Leia did too.”

“I heard what happened to her.” Luke takes a deep breath, his expression turning to mourning, but finds the strength to continue, “This... is going to be hard to take in. It’s true that I left my physical self. The next thing I know, I was shrouded by a white light. Time didn’t feel like it existed anymore. I realized I had gone into the netherworld of the Force. I heard voices- familiar ones, too. But then, the light disappeared and I was covered in darkness. I saw these four tall figures standing before me; it was like I was nothing before them. I call them the Watchers.”

“I saw the same ones too! Just now, when I was in the lake!”

Suddenly, Rey notices that something is different. “The Force,” she says, “I can barely feel it!”

Luke takes a deep breath. “The Watchers must have taken much of it away.”

Rey shakes her head in a panic. “But why? Who are they?”

“I don’t know their motives. But I do know this: their end game is to take the Force away from people. In the netherworld, I couldn’t see who they were, but I saw what they were doing. I could tell they were trying to bend something, as if they were trying to restrain some sort of wild creature. Then I felt that light again. When I opened myself to it, I saw what these figures were doing. They were forcing these people to kneal before them. And when they knelt, they started screaming. Finally, I could hear those familiar voices again- they were showing me that these figures were disrupting the Force, and the voices asked me for my help to stop them. Without hesitation, I promised them that I would.”

Rey is shocked. She had never heard of such an excruciating power before.

Luke continues, “The voices told me so many things, but because they all came to me in a storm, I can only piece together a few of them. I realized they were trying to teach me both valuable information and techniques. Before I could make it all clear, I blacked out. When I woke up, I was back in my physical body, in the same place I had left. I remembered that they told me that I needed to help stop a disruption occurring in Fortuna. When I discovered where it was, that’s when I sensed that you had came to the same place, likely because you felt the same disruptions too, and I rushed to save you.”

Rey is staring at the ground. Without moving her gaze, she mutters, “So I was right. There really is something wrong with the Force.” She closes her eyes, trying to find the right thing to say. Exasperated, she tries to speak up again. “I’m sorry with how we parted ways.”

Luke sighs, then replies, “When you came to me, I had changed. I didn’t tell you this before, but decades of torment had left my mind in shambles. I could feel something reaching in and twisting me, yet I couldn’t discover why it was happening. I became paranoid... fearful... and angry. With every failed decision I made, I became less and less sure of myself. When I would try to reach for the Force, I felt like I was losing control of my mind. Eventually, the only way to stop me from slipping further into insanity was to cut myself off from it. Without the Force... I just couldn’t do anything; I lost hope, and felt like the only thing to do was to die on that island. By the time I met you, I was not the same person I was when I called myself a Jedi. If I was, things would have gone differently. It was only when I went into the netherworld that I began to regain much of my old self- the poisons polluting my mind must have been cured by the Force’s strong presence there.”

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Rey sits in silence, and finishes the strange plant in her hands. Then Luke speaks up again:

Luke answers, “I felt a darkness watching over me as soon as I came back. I tried to feel for the presence of Force ghosts, but something was blocking me from contacting them. Just then, I remembered a technique the voices had taught me when I was in the netherworld. They called it a surrogate proxy. It was a way to hide my presence from the Watchers so they couldn’t find or reach into me. But when the surrogate is put up, one has to temporarily leave their connection with the Force.” Rey is startled for a bit, but Luke reassures her, “Don’t worry; when we leave the surrogate, the Force will be returned back to us.”

“But if these Watchers are always onto us, how can we ever leave this surrogate?”

“The Force voices told me about sacred expanses located in certain regions of the galaxy. The watchers’ powers cannot reach into them- at least, not yet. Some of these sacred expanses are located next to major Force disruptions that we have to patch up. I believe there is a good reason why these sacred expanses are so close to the disruptions. But when we leave these regions, we’re gonna have to use these surrogate proxies. I’ll have to teach you how to create your own around yourself.”

“Y- you’re going to actually teach me, this time?” Rey exclaims.

“There’s a lot you have to learn. Now that your connection to the Force is weaker, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go about a different way when using it.”

Rey finds a new strength inside herself and stands up. But suddenly, she remembers she has another duty.

“I have to go back to the Resistance. There was a general there whom I had a terrible vision of. But I can’t let him keep me away from helping my friends.”

Luke tells her, “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“What? But they need me!”

“You’d have to leave your surrogate. And with the Watchers tracking you, you’ll be putting them at risk. Right now, we don’t know what the Watchers want, or even who they are. And if this general has something to do with it, then we have to keep him away from you. The Resistance can’t know what you’re doing.”

Rey is frustrated, and looks like she has a hard time making the decision.

Luke continues, “Once we find out what’s causing these disturbances, then it’ll be safe to go back. We can’t fight the First Order using the Force if it’s grower more and more unstable.”

Rey relents, and walks over to Luke. “Then we can’t waste any more time.”

The X-wing seen is flying through the planet, over the tall wheat and glass stones, and arrives near the Myrioi Osprey. Luke and Rey head on board, and Luke is greeted by R2-D2.

“Hey there, old buddy!” Luke exclaims.

They get settled in, and Luke notices that one of the twin kyber crystals is on the ship. He tells her, “You have one? Amazing; I heard about the twin jades. With both of them combined, they can create a pretty strong weapon. In the hands of a skilled Force user, it has the power to change the tides of war.”

Rey replies, “I was only given one of them. I don’t know where the other one is; I hope to find it one day. But I don’t think we have time to search for it. Where do we go next?”

“I remember several places the Force voices told me to look into. But I don’t remember many of their names.” Luke begins to describe what he heard in the netherworld.

He finishes with, “...thin, silvery wisps in the sky. Winding, bottleneck passages in the sea. Rings of small, golden creatures joining together and wheeling through the winds, as they reflected off the rays of the giant, red sun...”

Rey thinks for a second, and then remembers, “I know that place. Etilma.”

Luke is surprised, “How did you know that?”

“When I was in the red lake, a collection of voices was speaking to me. I don’t think it was the Watchers; I felt like it was the Force. They were unraveling poems, talking about people. I realized they were the second half of these other three poems found in the sacred Jedi texts. One of the poems wasn’t about someone named Etilma- the poem was a personification of a planet. I think these stories are allegories; they’re like poetry.”

“You... you still have the texts?”

Rey tries to laugh it off, “Well, um, I took them before I left...”

Luke shakes his head, “Never mind that now. I could never read them anyways. Each time I tried to look inside of them for answers, I felt like I was being driven more and more insane.”

“That’s how I felt! Those crazy stories have been giving me a headache.”

“I was being literal. Remember how I said I felt like I was being twisted from within? I couldn’t even read a single word on its pages without feeling like my mind was losing more and more control. I can’t read them at all.”

“But... why?”

“I don’t know. What’s important now is that you’re the only one who can read them. And possibly, one of the few who’s smart enough to figure out what it means. From what Yoda told me, even the wisest of Jedi masters had trouble with them. I have a feeling that this isn’t the last time we’ll be needing these texts.”