The file is nearly cracked. HQ-7 whirls with intensity. Finn looks at the map; the figure is approaching closer. He readies his blaster. “Come on, you old bot!” And then, it’s cracked open.
Finn slowly approaches the hologram that has just appeared. But when he gets close, he can only gape at it. “Could it really be?...”
THE Incendiary fighters are struggling to survive. They call in backup, but the Aquilian lets out an expansive blast, roasting everything around it. On the ground, Rey continues to hold onto Litha, trying to protect her as best as she can.
She’s sprinting towards another rescue carrier, but a heavy object pounds into the ground before her, fluttering out a gust of roaring wind and sand. It’s the Aquilian. A wall of Incendiary fighters forms between them, trying to block it from attacking her. But it is futile. The Aquilian fires upon them, taking them down one by one, their screams cascading louder and louder.
In the superweapon, Hux grins madly, but just then, he receives a transmission. It’s from a Sera. “Do not harm that young girl! She is needed in the ritual!” Hux seethes. He stops firing wildly, and switches to a sniping system. He tries to lock onto Rey.
Rey senses she is being tracked. Using the Force, she tries to shake it off. But the more she struggles, the weaker and more tired she gets.
Then, there is a booming voice. One Deira has spoken: “It is time to begin the ritual.”
Rey looks into the crowd, and out of the mists, there is something concrete forming- beings that are not quite real, but not imaginary, emerge. They grab onto several children.
“Get away from them!” Rey screams. Yet she is too far away, and can do nothing but watch. The entities pull out their knives, raise them high, and stab the few children they’ve grabbed onto, draining them of their antidote.
“NO!” Rey shouts in mourning desperation. Now, the wall of ships behind her is nearly broken. She begins to feel a pull. “What’s happening?” she whispers in a panic. Then, she sees it: the Aquilian is pulling her lightsaber towards it, getting faster and faster as she gets nearer. Her fingers loosen, and the lightsaber flies off, but she holds onto it using all the Force she has. She tries to stomp down on the sand with her feet, but she can’t resist it.
“YES!” Hux shouts, “IT WORKS! HAHA!”
Rey tries her hardest to fight it, while Litha whimpers, trembling. And in her moment of struggle, the wisps break their way in; one of the ghostly mirages snatches Litha from Rey, who sees the young girl being dragged away.
“Litha!” Rey calls out. Litha reaches her hand out and shouts, “Rey!”
Rey reaches out towards Litha with the Force, but she’s too weak to use it to hold onto both the lightsaber and the young girl. Rey wants to let go of the lightsaber, but knows what incredible powers it has, and that the First Order can use it to decimate the galaxy. She has to choose. Litha? Or the galaxy? Before she can, an enormous hand grabs onto her face, and thrusts her into the air. A giant has gotten hold of her, and now her grip on the Force is weakening. She can’t see Litha anymore- she can’t see anything anymore.
She is on the brink of defeat.
I have to do it, she thinks to herself. No matter what the cost.
“ALSTAIRE! KIYLA!”
The shadows apparate, but they are blurred. Rey is still in so much pain and desperation that she can’t see them for what they are.
“Give it back,” Rey whispers in her dark, disturbing trance. “All of it.”
Kiyla gently replies, “We sense the danger too. A child, crying so close by. She’s in trouble. We have to help her.”
But then, there is only silence. Rey knows why. “You’ll only give it back if I can prove that I will use my powers for good?”
“Yes,” Alstaire says, “You know what you must do.”
Rey begins to bring up the ruby cube from within her. Her surrogate falls more and more. The artifact materializes, but then, she stops it before it fully does. She hesitates. She thinks to herself: Once I do this, there is no going back.
She hears Alstaire softly reassure her, “There is no time. This is the only way.”
Rey whispers, “I take back what I said. Just a little bit more.”
“It is not enough.”
“Please...”
“You have to give up your attachments,” Alstaire says. “Everyone has to. For the greater good.”
Selfishness, selflessness. Rey remembers. Now it’s starting to become clearer.
Kiyla shouts, “You have to save her! Do not make the same mistakes as Luke!”
Upon hearing his name, Rey braces herself, curls her fingers into a fist, and pulls the cube out from her. Alstaire reaches his hand over and takes it.
He says, “Your journey has been long and hard, but now you finally understand. You have been Chosen by the Force.”
A great aura begins to radiate from Rey. It’s different from anything she’s ever felt before.
“What is this? I never felt this way before. It’s... so, so much more than I’ve ever felt.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“We have given you more than you originally had. You deserve it. Ah, and I sense another,” Alstaire observes, “The twin kyber crystals. With more than just your power back, they are amplifying within you, heralding in a new emergence. It is time for you to realize your true destiny. Unleash your inner power!”
JADE light smashes through the battlefield, emanating from Rey, and bursting through everything. All the fighters look around, wondering what just happened. The giant tries to tighten his hold on Rey, but he can’t. He feels his hand getting weaker, getting looser. And then, he sees it.
Rey hovers her hands over the giant’s, and they are pulling his thick fingers out wider and wider. The giant stares in both fear and amazement, and at last, Rey releases herself from his grasp. Something is brewing within her. Her hands spread out, and she is levitating in the air, an invisible energy clutching her in place. A molten, pale gold sheath encroaches through her metal hand, superseding its gray skeleton. Her eyes begin to glow jade, and she lets out of a mighty battle cry.
She force pushes the giant all the way into the sky until he can be seen no more. Two First Order ships descend upon her, but with only one hand, she stops them in place, and they cannot fire. She swipes them away and they crash and explode. All around her, invisible threads of the Force twist and destroy all her enemies. She waves her hands towards the mist, and it disappears, releasing all of the children while the mirages cry out in anguish. The soldiers are released from their trance. Many transport ships swoop down and the soldiers usher the children, including Litha, on board. Rey reaches back towards the jade lightsaber, and wrenches it from Hux.
“What the hell is this?” Hux shouts. He thrusts harder onto the Aquilian, but it’s no use. Rey snatches the lightsaber back, and ignites its two blades. She slashes towards a Tatoonie walking machine, and it splits in two, destroying even the cliffs behind it.
A sarlacc-like monster lunges towards her, and just as it’s about to bite in, its jaws lock outwards. With her immense Force power, Rey holds open the monsters massive jaws, and in one swift motion, rips it apart. More sarlacc-like monsters lunge towards her, and Rey twirls her lightsaber and decimates them.
With this pivotal change in the tides of battle, the Incendiaries rally together and press on with a new, invigorated spirit. They charge towards the First Order ships, picking them apart as they lose formation and scramble to get back together.
Rey jumps up, and is floating in the air. She falls backwards and lands on a nearby cliff. She stares at them. The three Deira. Her true targets.
The Deira are defenseless. She readies her lightsaber. But just then, the Aquilian and three starfighters appear before her.
“As I said... you don’t know what REAL power is!” Hux shouts.
The starfighters and Aquilian attack her, and she jumps from cliff to cliff, avoiding them. Rey jumps down and slices through a starfighter, cutting it in half. The Aquilian shapeshifts again, and its prongs elongate to great lengths. Rey narrowly dodges them. Incendiary starships join the fray, picking apart the First Order starfighters. Rey lands back on a cliff, and now, it’s only her and Hux.
She runs towards the Aquilian, and slices down upon it. But as she tightly grips her lightsaber and it runs alongside the superweapon’s exterior, sparks flying in her faces as she yells, it doesn’t penetrate at all. She lands back on a cliff.
Hux exclaims, “This armor is invincible! Not even the Death Star is as resilient!”
The Aquilian’s prongs aggregate together in several more focused, and more powerful, cannons. They start to charge.
Rey runs alongside the cliffs as the Aquilian fires upon her. She thinks to herself: I can’t even scratch it!
A blast hits her, and she’s dazed. Sensing the opportunity, Hux uses the attractive fields of the crystal shards to pull the lightsaber away from Rey again. This time, however, he focuses all his prongs on the act. Rey uses the Force to pull the lightsaber back, and the two are in an ensuing tug of war. Hux fires upon Rey fervently, who uses the Force to stop the blasts in place. But now, she’s struggling.
With all her might, Rey tries to turn the blasts around. Slowly, she manages to do so, and releases them, hitting Hux, who drops his grip on the lightsaber, and Rey retrieves it from the air. But suddenly, another prong sucks her in, and more prongs pin her and the lightsaber onto the Aquilian. She feels a pulsating echo- the vibrations of the shards within the Aquilian. They’re similar to the crystal.
Rey manages to push herself away, and sees the exposed crystals Hux used to draw her in. She reaches out her lightsaber towards them, focusing hard, and several fly out of the ship towards Rey, who dodges them.
“What?” Hux grits his teeth. He fires several beams at Rey again, but they’re weaker. They both sense this.
As Rey battles with Hux, the Incendiary ships fire upon one of the Deira. It is swarmed by an entire legion, and bellows out in pain and they take it down, its lasers stabbing through its sluggish skin and spewing blue blood everywhere. The Deira dies. Its mist ascends into the sky, and in the next moment, the thundering reaction unleashes rain all over the desert plains. However, the sarlacc-like creatures snatch up all the ships around its corpse. The Incendiary fleet has lost almost all of its ships, and there are still two Deira left.
Rey continues to use the same trick on Hux. Sensing an opening, she then runs on the cliff towards one of the Deira, and is now so close to it. But the Aquilian gets in between. It is greatly weakened now, but Hux doesn’t give up. He yells out one last battle cry as he charges the dying Aquilian towards Rey, mustering all the energy he can into one massive, concentrated blast. He corners Rey in a cliff; she realizes there is only one way she can go. She jumps into the air, raising her double bladed lightsaber, and slashes through the Aquilian. The momentum pushes her through the other side, and she immediately slices off the head of the Deira, ending the ritual it was performing.
At the last minute, Hux escapes from the exploding Aquilian in an escape pod. With the two Deira dead, and the Aquilian destroyed, the last Deira panics and calls in a large transport ship. A beam falls upon it, and slowly, it fades away into the ship. The ship retreats.
“Well, would you look at that,” Serei remarks.
“All units, retreat!” Hailden announces. All of the First Order falls back, leaving the planet.
Rey kneels down on one knee, exhausted. She looks towards the children. Many of them have been evacuated, but many still remain. She searches for Litha, and asks an Incendiary soldier, “Have you seen a blonde girl with an ashy face? Her name is Litha.”
The soldier stares at Rey agape, astonished that this transcendental warrior is speaking to him. But then he regains his senses. “Sorry, but I don’t know who Litha is, and there’s tons of kids like that here. We can’t focus on just one of them now; we have to calm them down and make sure everything stays organized. We need help keeping a look of these children and finding their parents.”
Rey looks all around her. She gradually is fading out of war, and now, the gravity of the situation finally hits her. Hundreds of children stand around, lost and vulnerable. Incendiary soldiers dash towards them to keep them safe, but the sheer volume of them overwhelms the helpers. A young boy, with scars all over, looks up towards Rey. Rey thinks to herself, Litha is either here or has been evacuated. Someone has to be with her. But all these children need my help right now. As she calms the children down, she begins to realize the significance of this moment. They’re all safe now, she thinks to herself. The Watchers really did it. They do care.
FINN stares at the hologram below. “No...” he whispers. But now, he must grasp the cold, hard truth: Citho was not on Fortuna that day.
The doors of the isolated chamber open. Finn points his blaster towards it, but then a grave look descends upon his face. Citho is standing before Finn. The general sees the blaster, and the floating hologram. “My health records?” he seethes. “Guards, seize him!”