Rey sat cross-legged, eyes closed. She didn't remember rising off the ground, but she was vaguely aware that somehow she'd ended up floating. Pebbles and small boulders hovered around her, like a field of asteroids orbiting their sun. The Force flowed through her, buoyed her, connected her to everything. The lush rain forest moon of Ajan Kloss was teeming with life. She could feel every tree and fern, every reptile and insect. A few strides away in a hidden den, a small furry creature groomed its litter of four kits.
"That's it, Rey," came Leia's voice, deep and soothing as always. "Very good. Your connection becomes stronger every day. Can you feel it?"
"Yes."
"Now reach out. If your mind is ready, you'll be able to hear those who have come before."
Rey inhaled through her nose and sent her awareness into the void. Peace and calm were key, Leia always said. She reached, she searched, she felt the breeze on her cheeks, she smelled loamy soil, damp from the recent rain.
"Be with me, be with me, be with me," she murmured. But she heard…nothing except wind in the trees and chirruping insects.
"Rey?"
She didn't want to admit that she was failing, so instead she said, "Why did you stop training with Luke?" Her words came out too harsh, almost like a challenge.
Leia took it in stride. "Another life called to me."
Eyes still closed, Rey asked, "How did you know?"
"A feeling. Visions. Of serving the galaxy in different ways."
"But how did you know those visions were true?" Rey pressed.
"I knew." She heard the smile in Leia's voice.
Rey didn't understand how Leia could be so sure. Of anything.
"I treasured each moment I spent with my brother," Leia added. "The things he taught me…I use them every day. Once you touch the Force, it's part of you always. Over the years, I continued to learn, to grow. There were times on the Senate floor when the meditations I'd practiced with Luke were the only thing that kept me from causing a galactic incident."
Rey frowned. Leia didn't need patience. She could have made anyone do anything she wanted, with the power of the Force. Surely she'd been tempted?
"Was Luke angry? When you quit?" She hoped Leia noticed that she could talk and float at the same time now. That was progress, right?
Leia paused to consider. "He was disappointed. But he understood. I think he held out hope that I'd return to it someday."
Rey almost laughed. "He should have known better." Once Leia made a decision, it was for keeps.
"Now stop trying to distract me," Leia said. "Reach out."
Rey refocused and emptied her mind of worries, just as Leia had taught her. She cast out her awareness. Opened herself to anything the Force might want to tell her. Tentatively, she called for him: Master Skywalker?
Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.
"Master Leia, I don't hear anyone."
"Let go of all thought. Let go of fear. Reach out. Invite the Jedi of the past to be with you."
"Be with me…be with me…" She waited all of a second, maybe two. "They're not with me." Rey made a noise of exasperation, then flipped herself neatly to land on the ground. Rocks toppled around her.
"Rey," Leia said. The general could put so much into a single word: chastisement, acceptance, amusement, fondness. Maybe that's why she'd become such a powerful leader. "Be patient."
"I'm starting to think it's impossible. To hear the voices of the Jedi who came before," Rey said, striding toward Leia.
Her Master always managed to look neat and tidy, no matter how muddy their makeshift base got. Her hair was pulled back into a circlet of braids, and she wore a quilted vest over a brown tunic. Alderaanian jewelry always dangled from her earlobes, wrapped her wrists and fingers. Her eyes were bright and knowing, as always, but Rey had noticed that her movements had slowed recently, as though her bones ached.
Leia's face held a hint of a smile. "Nothing's impossible."
Rey grabbed her blast helmet and leapt to her feet. "Nothing's impossible…" she echoed, trying to believe it. "I'm going to run the training course. That I can do." Rey needed to run. Or maybe hit something.
Rey dashed into the jungle. BB-8 rolling after her. Thick green foliage whipped past Rey as she ran, the flag in her hand flashing red with each pump of her arms. She bounded over tangled ferns, dodged hanging vines. Sweat soaked her collar, and her thighs burned with effort.
Even so, running through the jungle was not harder than running ankle-deep in desert sand. She could do this all day.
Rey had already taken out the first two training remotes and captured the flags they guarded. She had leapt a massive gorge, fought blindly over a ravine while balanced on a tightrope made of vines, traversed a thin ridge high above the jungle canopy. Now the course had her doubling back, where she encountered BB-8. He warbled at her.
"One to go," she said. "C'mon!"
The final remote eluded her because it was faster. Trickier. More droid than remote. She'd told Leia she wanted a challenge today, and Leia had delivered.
BB-8 sped after her, beeping complaints every time he had to dodge a tree root. Rey hid a smile. She was continually impressed by how well the little droid kept up with her, whether they were running the sands of Jakku, the rocky trails of Takodana, or the jungles of Ajan Kloss. His maneuverability made him the perfect training companion.
He bleated a warning.
"I see it, Beebee-Ate." She slid to a halt.
The spherical remote had stopped and now hovered midair as if waiting for her, or maybe taunting her. It was different from the other two she'd taken out, a wicked red shell surrounding shining metal firing ports. It hummed dark and low; she felt that hum deep in her chest. Rey unhooked her lightsaber from her utility belt. Ignited it. Yellow light glowed against the leaves around her as she stared the remote down. She was going to destroy this thing.
Suddenly a blast shot out from one of the ports. Stinging pain exploded in her upper arm. Rey resisted the urge to clutch her arm or even grunt in pain. She deserved it, after all. She hadn't been ready. Determination is not the same as readiness, Leia would say.
Well, she wasn't one to make the same mistake twice. The next time it fired, she whipped up her lightsaber to deflect the blast and sent it flying into the trees. She didn't even have a chance to congratulate herself before another blast hit her in the chest. Of course multiple ports meant multiple blasts. She had to focus.
She breathed deep through her nose. Reached out to the Force.
The training remote started to buzz around her, flashing angry red as it slung stinging darts in a dizzying array, but she let instinct take over and whirled her lightsaber with equally dizzying speed, deflecting every single attack. Connecting to the Force came easily these days. So easily it was like breathing. But the peace, the calm that Leia was always going on about eluded her. So even though she could counter the remote's every move, she couldn't find her opening for attack. Patience, she imagined Leia saying. Wait for your moment…
The remote was behind her, then in front of her, then high above her head, darting through the air like a buzzing fly, and if she could just smash it…
The remote sped away and she tore after it. It stopped again, fired a few bolts to goad her. Teeth gritted, she swung her lightsaber. The remote dodged, and her blade missed, slicing through a tree trunk; sparks and leaves and bark splinters rained down as the tree toppled, smashing jungle foliage on its way down. She leapt over the downed trunk after the remote. Swung again. The remote swooped around as if anticipating the arc of her blade, barely evading when the lightsaber slid through another tree as if it were made of butter.
A roiling dark cloud of frustration grew inside her.
She hardly realized what she was doing as raw instinct took over. Rey threw her lightsaber, winging it like a propeller through the air at the red remote. It dodged, and the lightsaber sliced through yet another tree. The remote screamed as it dived for her head, but this time she was ready. She reached with the Force for a downed branch. It flew into her hand. She anticipated the exact angle of attack, and she whipped up the branch and thrust it into the remote, spearing it against a nearby tree trunk.
Her lightsaber returned to her hand with a satisfying smack.
The crushed red remote twitched and sparked against the tree.
She glared at it as triumph filled her. Maybe patience was overrat—
Whispers filled her ears. No, her very mind. She whirled, seeking their source even as the realization dawned: It was happening again.
The jungle around her faded. All went deathly silent as sweltering darkness closed in, threatening to smother her. An image sprang to mind, and she flinched away, though there was no avoiding the horrible sight: Kylo Ren, black-clad and ferocious, his crackling red lightsaber slicing mercilessly through robed figures. She heard their screams, smelled their blood, watched as they tried in vain to flee or beg for their lives. Nothing slowed him. He was a juggernaut of destruction, monstrous and unstoppable.
Relief flooded her like a wave when the vision shifted, but it quickly changed to utter desolation as she saw herself, wind-whipped and alone, standing in a forsaken landscape of endlessly fractured ground. The hair on her arms stood on end, for the air crackled with electricity. Before her, a massive monolith jutted upward, scraping the sky. It was black and shimmery, casting a huge shadow.
The monolith shifted. Became a giant face of stone, cloaked in evil…
No, not a stone at all. A form of something, part human, part... creature. Was this creature alive? Or was it—
Flashes of Luke's face. Then Kylo's. Han Solo, his hand against Kylo's cheek.
Finally, a burning voice in her head, feminine and commanding: "Exegol."
She whispered the word back, her voice shaking: "Exegol…?"
And suddenly she was standing before yet another giant stone structure, this one shaped like a huge claw, its thick, bent fingers grasping ever upward. Her legs twitched as if to flee, even as something about it beckoned to her, invited her. She found herself wanting to approach the massive claw-thing, wanting to know what it would feel like to run her fingers along its rough black surface.
The black claw-thing was a throne; she could see it now.
She took a step forward, but something beeped at her, and she hesitated. The beeping continued, grew more insistent. Clarity hit her like a quarterstaff to the jaw. Of course she couldn't touch that throne. It belonged to darkness and evil. She had already chosen a different path, hadn't she?
More beeping. Something appeared on the throne. A familiar figure. Rey blinked in shock and dismay.
Quick as it appeared, the vision evaporated like morning mist, and she was left gasping in the jungle. Rey was so relieved to sense the life and light and humid green around her that it took her a moment to come fully back to herself, to trace the sound of beeping to a felled tree, and beneath it a very indignant BB-8.
Rey dashed over to him, pushed some branches away. "I'm so sorry!" she said.
He babbled at her while she extricated him from the fallen trunk—it took a little help from the Force to free him completely.
One of the orange discs that protected his modular tool bay had popped off, exposing a dark channel to his motive system. She'd hurt her friend. Poe was going to be livid with her, but not more livid than she was with herself.
The little droid warbled at her.
"Yes, Beebee-Ate, it happened to me again."
He whirred at her, part question, part empathy.
"No, I still don't know what the Force was trying to show me, but this time was…worse." So much worse. Unspeakably worse. She stared off into the trees. Some of the flashes had been memories. Hers, and…Kylo Ren's? "Let's get back."
Maybe she should tell Leia what had happened. Or maybe not. The general had enough things to worry about, and Rey needed Leia to believe in her, to trust her. What would the general say if she knew how Rey's frustration and anger were triggering visions of death and dark power?
She just needed more training. More time meditating in the Force, more time seeking the peace Leia was trying to teach her. She could do it. She had to.
If only she could hear voices through the Force, like Leia could. Surely Luke could provide some guidance. As Rey and BB-8 neared the camp, she saw Snap Wexley and Rose Tico walking toward her.
Rose's expression softened with empathy. The commander of the Engineering Corps had a disarming quality about her. Whenever she spoke to Rey, it was all Rey could do to keep from spilling all her fears and worries to her friend. "You okay?" Rose asked.
"Yes, of course, I was just doing…"
"Jedi stuff," Rose finished for her.
"Yeah."
Thankfully, Rose chose not to press her. She said, "The general asked for you."
Rey took a deep breath. It was decision time. Should she tell Leia about her dark vision or keep it to herself?