First Order ships swarm into the battlefield and fire everywhere in a chaotic barrage, shattering the fragile temple buildings. Archs and pillars start crumbling and falling. The Jurials are screaming, startling Rey. But she calms herself down. Closing her eyes, she reaches both hands out. The massive avalanche of stones stops falling, and lie still in space.
A sleek First Order ship flies through the battlefield, and a general with a black avian-like mask rides on its transport. “ATTACK HER!” she screams from above.
Finn activates a plasma shield, and uses it to protect Rey from being shot at while other soldiers form a defense around her with their own shields. On the ground, another general, with the mask of a god of rage, silently commands troops to surround Rey’s guards. With their every breath, the Resistance tries to fend them off. As soldiers charge at the general, he calmly places his hand down on the ground, and a rumbling occurs. The Resistance fighters begin to lose their footing, and suddenly, are struck with intense vibrations, causing them to kneel down and scream.
The general with the avian-like mask flies by over a group of Resistance fighters, and with one swift strike of her hand, a swarm of rocky fragments above them coalesces into an avalanche, and floods down into the fighters.
Poe starts ordering his troops to go into defense formation. He tells Yatu to go hide. Rose joins Poe in fighting against the general on the ground, while Merilia heads into an aircraft with other soldiers to combat the aerial enemies.
The old Jurial speaks to Finn, “They’re here for the artifacts!” She hides the dark jade crystal in her robes, and Finn, reluctantly leaving Rey, shields the old Jurial from the attacks. Faraway lies an old temple, with two paths leading to it: one through a treacherous rock formation, and others through foggy ruins. Jurials run towards the temple through the formation but are gunned down. Finn sees this and tries to take the other route, but the old Jurials stops him: “You mustn’t go through there! Come, I know a pathway we can take.” The old Jurial runs towards a hidden nook in the formation, and Finn tries to follow her into the passageway. But before he can reach it, he’s knocked to the ground by a nearby blast, and in his blurred vision, he sees the old Jurial is left without a guard as she continues running. As stormtroopers run towards her, Finn tries to get up, but is too disoriented. He reaches out towards the troops, murmuring “No...”
Just then, to his surprise, several large boulders behind the stormtroopers begin shaking. The stormtroopers briskly turn around, guns up, surprised by the enemy behind them. They see the shaking boulders, and then see Finn reaching out towards them. “There!” one of them shouts. Finn reaches out harder, but the boulders barely budge now. Just when the stormtroopers start to fire on him, they’re hit with red lasers that seem to follow their own trajectory, like homing missiles. Rose appears with a gun and helps Finn up; he begins to orient himself again.
“Nice shot,” he compliments her, “A new kind of homing gun?”
Rose replies, “No... it’s just an ordinary blaster.”
“What? I’ve never seen an ordinary blaster do that.”
“Me neither...”
An explosion rattles them. Finn heads into the passageway while Rose joins a fight in the other direction. Finn catches up to the old Jurial and they both enter the temple, and see many Jurials already inside. The old Jurial barricades the door. But as Finn is taking a long, deep breath to cool off, he senses that something’s not right. He looks up, and notices that the old Jurial appears to be speaking in tongues to someone else through a transmitter hidden in her robes. The old Jurial sees Finn look at her, and gasps, but quickly tries to brush it off, asking him to seal the door. He heads over to her and seals it, but then sternly tells her, “Those are First Order code words.” She closes her eyes and doesn’t respond. Finn doesn’t inquire any further.
The Jurials are all evacuated into their holy temples, and only the Resistance and First Order, along with some Jurial soldiers, are left in the open city. Rey finally drops the stones. She rushes back into battle, heading for the faraway temple that soldiers are trying to break into, but First Order ships have blocked all paths, and she is forced to take an alternate route into a ghostly expanse of the ruins. Black, amphibian-like creatures are slithering through the creaks and shadows, and robed, cloaked figures are silently waiting. A flash of their First Order insignias is seen. Rey approaches a building where one of these figures is hiding, but stops, noticing something is not right just ahead of her. She turns and runs right into a dark alleyway, but suddenly, one of the black creatures grabs onto her legs and slithers upwards in a criss-cross shape, in a pattern like a Cat’s Cradle with a diamond hole in the middle, binding her arms together. Two soldiers step out and approach her. When one of the soldiers is right in front of her, Rey swiftly steps back and grabs onto one of the sides of the diamond hole, roughly contorts her body around and in the blink of an eye, slides out of the binding and entraps the soldier into the creature. She force pushes the other soldier back into the shadows, where another one of the creatures grabs onto him and constricts him into a hexagonal pattern.
As the creatures grab onto him harder and harder, the soldier struggles to speak: “What... kind of magic trick... is this...” Rey stares at him, but does not respond. She turns around and starts running again, zig-zagging through a maze of alleyways. But just as she’s about to reach the end of the ruins, she feels her spine shiver. She knows someone is behind her. Rey turns around and sees Kylo Ren. He has a new mask now, a restored form of his old one.
“It’s been a while since we met each other face to face. Every time I think we would, something would get in our way. But this time is different. Draw.” Kylo orders.
Rey reaches for a hilt, but pauses. “DRAW!” Kylo shouts.
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Rey draws a blue lightsaber. Its light is not as stable as it used to be.
“Still carrying around that broken stick, are we? Let’s see how fine of a job you did at fixing it!”
Kylo swings at her, and Rey parries. His wild swings seem reckless and chaotic, as if he’s acting on pure instinct and without a plan. But as Rey is focused on parrying, she suddenly feels a solid thud against her back- she’s landed against a temple wall. Kylo smirks and tries to aim for her hand, but she kicks him away and he stumbles back. Now Rey realizes Kylo did have a plan all along- he was trying to use the tight corridors and walls around them to his advantage.
Just as she guessed, Kylo continues wildly swinging to force Rey into small corners and alleyways, but she manages to force push him away and elbow his chest to escape. But when she runs away with her back turned towards him, Kylo kicks at her feet and she falls. Stumbling back as she gets back up, she loses her defensive stance, and Kylo thrusts his lightsaber towards her, but she parries it upwards. He pushes her forward and corners her between two temple walls. As the two are locked in a stalemate, Kylo grunts and forcefully turns his lightsaber hilt. Rey eyes it, and catches on that he’s trying to use his hilt to burn her shoulder. She tries to fight it, but with her lightsaber thrusting against Kylo’s at an upward angle, she’s defenseless. The light pieces her shoulder and she screams; with her last remaining strength, she angrily slices Kylo’s lightsaber away and rolls away from him, but drops her own due to the pain of the light. She clutches her shoulder and seethes with hatred at Kylo, feeling a scar forming as the heat and smoke sears through her fingers.
“It’s over for you,” Kylo tells her, with a serpentine glare. He begins walking towards her, then quickly picks up the pace and sprints.
But Rey is now more determined than ever before. With her free hand, she stealthily clenches her fist and feels the Force grasping the stones and fallen pillars around her. In one swift motion, she thrusts her hand outwards and the pillars fly up; Kylo dodges most of them, but one knocks him to the ground. When the pillars miss Kylo, their momentum drives them into the walls behind him, and they crash through the temple ruins. As the ruins begin the crumble, Rey quickly uses the Force to grab her lightsaber, and the massive ruins collapse, trapping the two. From far away, the Resistance troops, noticing the gigantic collapse, heads towards them.
Rey finds herself in near total darkness, but senses Kylo nearby. She treads carefully, and hears the slithers of the creatures just beneath her feet. She feels her way around to try to find the exit of this labyrinth, and reaches a thin wall. Behind it, she hears slithers crawling up and constricting. Knowing that she has to make a run for it, she dashes across the wall, but when she reaches the end of it, one of the creatures flies through and latches onto her in a hexagonal pattern. Half of her body is bounded now and she kneels down on one knee, with one hand supporting her up.
She hears Kylo’s muffled voice speak up right next to her, “Mavubiks are quite viscious, wouldn’t you say? But did you know I learned how to control them? It’s not a trick that-”
Before Kylo can finish, he’s suddenly lashed with a whipping pain that chokes his neck, and he manages to contort his hands and body in a way that releases the creature from his windpipe, such that it now is curled up into one his arms and one of his legs. “Impossible,” he mutters.
Rey is taken back too, but does not waste time thinking. Without hesitating, she ignites her lightsaber, but Kylo yells out, steps forward in an intricate pattern, and rips the Mavubik off, hurling it onto Rey. He traps Rey into a winding, elaborate pattern far more complex than the ones before, and she clutches onto her weapon in shaking desperation. Rey’s eyes widen. Smirking confidantly, Kylo tells her, “So you got lucky and picked up on my skills fast. But no one can escape this one.”
But Rey is not surprised because it is inescapable- it’s because something about it is familiar to her. She whispers, “The Hooded Beast”.
Rey twirls her fingers and body in a way that releases the creature, and when Kylo least expects it, she wraps it around him, forcing him to kneel down. She pauses, taken back at what just happened. But then, Kylo speaks again.
“The Smiling Shadow,” he whispers back through his mask.
Rey gasps, and steps back from him. “How did you learn those words?”
Kylo answers, “Because I knew him too.”
A moment, living on as if time was frozen, passes by, and quickly dies once the ruins entrapping the two in darkness are blasted away, enshrouding them in enormous dust clouds and debris. Rey covers her eyes and all at once, red lasers start pouring down where Kylo is. The Mavubik, startled, slithers away, and Rey hears an agonizing scream from where Kylo is- but she cannot see him, as the dust clouds obscure her vision. Resistance fighters have arrived and are now shooting at him.
When the clouds clear up, she sees Kylo bruised, his mask broken, and with blood and burns all over his body. He gnaws his teeth, and screams again, but this time in defiance- lifting his hand up, he pushes the Resistance fighters away. He tries to stand up, but Rey uses the Force to throw debris at him. As the stones knock him down, he writhes in pain. He’s worn down by the barrage of broken ruins, and gasps for air. Rey clenches her fist and a broken pillar on the ground starts rumbling; but at that very moment, she feels like she has to stop. She looks at Kylo and sees his withered body sauntering back and forth; he is suffering, but is trying his hardest to keep himself alive. Rey loosens her fist, and the pillar lies still. Unsure of what to do now, she shouts the first thing that comes to her mind: “Stop! Everyone, just stop!” The troops who are running back towards them are confused, but obey her orders with hesitation.
Suddenly, Rey feels a huge pang, as if her connection with the Force was rapidly being severed. Shocked and confused, she tries to move the pillar again, but feels weaker, and the pillar barely budges. Sensing the opportunity, Kylo uses the force to push every Resistance soldier out of the way, using a power far stronger than he had used before, until he and Rey are isolated, and attacks her. Rey fights back, but Kylo, even in his waning state, strikes her down to the ground with ease, knocking her lightsaber away. He saunters over, and towers above her.
But instead of finishing her off, he freezes. He senses something is unusual and yells out, “You think I’m stupid? Are you mocking me? I don’t sense it anymore. That raw power you had. And how did you know those words... what kind of trap are you laying out for me?” Rey tries to speak, but nothing comes out. In a fit of desperation, Kylo takes his helmet off. “Will you speak to me now? You thought I wouldn’t KNOW!?!” Rey is drawn into Kylo’s eyes; beneath his rage, she sees that Kylo is shivering. He is just as lost as she is, and wants to force her to give him an answer. As Kylo grows more and more unstable, Rey prays to the Force, wanting to find the right thing to say, but she is alone.
Just then, an aircraft starts firing down at Kylo. He manages to dodge its attacks. Merilia is piloting the ship and holds off Kylo, forcing him to escape. Rey suddenly feels a slight re-connection with the Force, but not a full recovery. She’s able to use her reinvigoration to force grab her lightsaber.
Soon after, the First Order is pushed back. Kylo and the two mysterious generals depart. But now intel has gathered something new about the Jurials.