"Tell me, Rey," Poe said, "That you're not just doing this to test yourself."
Rey paused, ducking into the shadow of a stone archway. "We already went over this, Poe – Commander. It's a tactical decision. I go after Ominous And Dressed In Black, and the rest of you handle his thugs."
This was very Poe, she mused. Even when the plan was entirely his, he'd get restless if he wasn't first into the fray.
Ominous And Dressed In Black was their nickname for the mysterious Darksider who ruled over the world of Duhakun. It was an isolated desert world in the Outer Rim, lying close to a couple of other backwater systems where the Resistance were looking to establish a presence. Naturally, they couldn't afford to leave such a warlord unmolested.
Rey was in two minds about this operation. On the one hand, the Jedi weren't generally meant to go looking for a fight. On the other hand, the Resistance had its priorities, and they had the people of Duhakun to think about. And finally, if she was honest with herself, there was something enticing about going toe-to-toe with an opponent of this sort again. Here was the test she needed.
They weren't the only ones hunting, of course. When they'd come to Duhakun, they'd made for Natoche, an old mountain settlement made up of impressive towers and temples. There they had swiftly drawn the attention of the warlord's local enforcers, prompting a brief but vicious engagement which they had won, sending the surviving enforcers fleeing. That resulted in the warlord himself taking a personal interest in the intruders.
Thus, as night drew in, an ugly gunship had swept into view, settling atop one of the new landing platforms in the town. The hunt had begun.
So far, then, Poe's plan was working. The warlord's retinue seemed to be the usual accumulation of scum and villains that such petty despots gathered. The Resistance forces hiding within the city and the surrounding gullies and caves should be more than a match for them. What it really hinged on, then was which of their Force-wielders won their impending contest.
Rey could feel him in an indistinct way. His presence had a curdled aspect to it, violent ambition left to sour over long years. Malice emanated from him, permeating the city as they stalked each other in the highest levels of the town.
Natoche rose from a small plateau surrounded on all sides by a gaping chasm. In the starlight, narrow stone bridges stood out like little threads of white and grey against the depthless black of the pit.
"Are the civilians still lying low?" Rey murmured into her commlink.
"Yeah," Finn replied. "Though I can't imagine anyone's sleeping tonight."
"OK." That was about the best they could hope for, in the circumstances. "Going quiet, I think I'm close."
She leapt, silent as a loth-cat, across the gaps between buildings, the Force letting her propel herself further than she could've done before. Ahead loomed a temple, crowned with a thicket of spires.
Nearing it, Rey had a sense of something changing in the Force around her, as if there were trails of smoke around her, thickening into heavy ropes of the stuff.
But another element ran alongside it, something which felt neither light nor dark. Shards of ghost-light danced at the edges of her vision, the glimpses of things which had not yet come to pass. Things which might or might not occur at all. They were raw potential, fragments of possibility.
She knew enough from the texts to recognise this phenomenon, and moreover she'd experienced one before on the Supremacy, centred on Ben Solo: a Shatterpoint. This was where the thread of the future could diverge in a thousand directions. She was walking along a temporal faultline, putting herself at the epicentre. She had a suspicion as to just what that would entail.
She vaulted another divide, landing quietly on the roof of the temple itself. Its great dome reared up above her, and she went for her staff as she advanced. But she didn't ignite its shock-coils just yet.
The trailing fissure in the Force led her to a heavy door. At the flick of her finger, the Force drew back the bolts and eased the door open, and Rey stepped into the chamber. For a few moments she held still, casting the net of her perceptions wide. There was an altar at the centre, inlaid with dual patterns of silver and gold, winding around each other. On the far side, stairs were visible, leading from below. Candles burned low, the bands of metal catching the light and sending it swimming across the stone.
The effect was hypnotic, and Rey had to tear her eyes away – perhaps not a moment too soon. Out of the stairwell's shadows came a hooded figure, tall and slender from what she could see. Armour showed beneath the cloak, gleaming jet and the dark grey sheen of Ultrachrome. A long, curved vibrosword glimmered in a gauntleted fist.
Immediately, it turned to face Rey. "So the prize brings itself to me. The hunted, playing at being the hunter." A sibilant male voice. "The First Order will look most kindly upon you as a gift."
Lime green skin showed in the shadows of his hood when he drew it back. Tattoos dotted his face.
Rey did her best to hide her surprise. "I didn't think a Mirialan would care for the First Order," she said cautiously. Hell, there were plenty fighting for the Resistance nowadays, their people having suffered cruelly under the Empire.
The Mirialan warrior gave a snort of derision. "I serve nothing so mundane as the First Order. My allegiance is to the power that underpins it, the one through which the Sith ruled the Galaxy."
"But there are no Sith now," Rey probed as they circled each other. "The cult died with Vader and Palpatine."
"Oh, the Sith themselves perished," he acknowledged. "But they had acolytes. Servants, to whom they doled out morsels of power and knowledge-"
Rey cut him off. "You were an Inquisitor."
The Mirialan smiled. "Yes! Now you see. You behold the Second Brother, to use my old title. The irony is…" the smile became a smirk. "You've already met one of my order."
Who could he – oh. Of course. "Snoke?"
A satisfied chuckle met her words. "Ah, that's gratifyingly sharp. Yes! Though I knew him as First Brother back in the old days, or the Grand Inquisitor. An ambitious creature always – I withdrew rather than be deemed an obstacle to his rise."
"And now Snoke's gone…" Rey murmured.
"Dead by the hands of a volatile apprentice," the Second Brother grinned. "Who will look fondly upon the one who brings his nemesis before him in shackles."
"So that's your game," Rey muttered. "And you'll worm your way in until you feel ready to take his throne for yourself?"
"So perceptive."
"Hardly. You Darksiders all think alike."
He snorted. "For a second-hand Jedi, you certainly know all the lines." There was a subtle change in his posture now, and in the angle of his sword.
Rey eyed the ultrachrome blade. "No lightsaber?"
Anger darkened her opponent's features. "Destroyed in battle, long ago," he replied. "And after that, it seemed imprudent to announce myself with Skywalker and other Jedi at large. But please, let's not get sidetracked." They continued to circle as he carried on. "I was rather concerned that the Guavians' assassin might have cheated me of my prize, you know. But I see the talk of your perseverance wasn't wrong. Perhaps it will make for a stimulating fight after all, before I take you in."
Rey stopped pacing. "Come and find out."
He leapt at her then, vibroblade flaring into life and cutting the air with a howl of energies. But Rey met it with the tight, efficient movements of Shien, turning away his sword and probing his defences in turn.
"Hmm," the Second Brother grunted when they separated. "This would seem to be more than the skill which felled that hunter. But still you're just the Scavenger, an apprentice for, what, two years now? No match for true mastery."
There was a character to his movements, jabbing and cutting with tight, focused motions. An emphasis on footwork, carrying him in and out of range. Already, his favoured Form was clear to Rey.
Makashi. She might have expected as much from one trained to kill Jedi. The Inquisitor's fighting style carried all that neatness and economy that marked the Form, the part of it which seemed to taunt ever so slightly. Many of his attacks were aimed at her hands. It spoke of cunning, but also arrogance. Look at my mastery, look how little effort it takes for me to drive you back and put you to such pains to respond.
Rey met that precision with her own. She held back from the precepts of Ataru for now, holding herself within the eye of the storm. She needed calm, she needed to be measured. Shien provided some of her defence, but for the most part it was Soresu which warded off the keening blade.
Somewhere in Drallig's lessons, there had been the proposition that every duel was a conversation. Rey's opponent, however, seemed more intent on a lecture. And there she found her angle – she disagreed. His Form was rooted in well-honed and rigorously drilled finesse, she disrupted his sequences of attack. She didn't try to outright steal the initiative, but nonetheless she wouldn't let him summon up the momentum he wanted.
Letting the Force permeate her, she had a feeling of sudden clarity. Their duel wasn't simply the Shatterpoint; the Shatterpoint ran through it, little cracks of potential spidering through the fight.
"Where's she gone, hmm?" purred the Second Brother, but there was irritation under the taunting note in his voice. "The fierce Jedi who's wreaked such havoc?"
His style didn't change, nor did his expression, but Rey detected the shift in the Force. There was a tremor of disquiet in him. It became anger, and his movements came faster and weightier. But here too was a flaw; Makashi didn't allow for the kinds of expansive moves that could harness that passion and anger. For a Darksider, it channelled a kind of disdainful control, making its wielder a conductor.
But now Rey was interfering with the rhythm. Holding herself at the eye of the storm, she allowed herself to slip fractionally into its currents, for a second at a time. Only ever doing enough to throw her enemy off a little. She saw what was coming next, and she'd need all her focus for that.
Their duel gained pace, the two of moving more swiftly and striking harder. It broke from the confines of the monastery and raged over the rooftops, the two of them dancing across tiles and sheets of stone and metal. That apparently was the cue for battle to break out below, and searing flashes of red and blue light the streets, silhouetting the spires.
Rey skittered and whirled, springing from chimney to gutter to railing. Stay centred, she told herself. She had to read the fragmentary tracks of the Shatterpoint, to avoid being dominated by her opponent.
So far, he seemed quite certain that he was leading. "You haven't had to face bladework like this, have you child?" He aimed precise cuts at her fingers, a Sun Djem manoeuvre, and Rey angled her staff carefully to deflect. "You've gone up against half-formed Darksiders and mundane blademasters. But here's the skill designed to defeat Jedi." He came on, almost waltzing with his elegant, collected footwork. "Oh, you've some skill and you're certainly inventive, but now you're up against a Makashi adept. You'll be beaten, and you will know you're lost before the end. Dun Möch, little Padawan, that's what awaits you."
But Rey knew that. Drallig had taught her this game, and she could play it too.
She rode the currents of the Force, weaving between them so that even as she parried and deflected the vibro-sword, she dodged around the Second Brother. She wasn't sure how far he perceived her awareness, but on some level he detected it. At the very least, he could see how she kept seizing the initiative from him.
It soon eroded his composure. "This isn't you," he spat, when she veered away from a jab at her neck, stepping to the side and launching a brief flurry that threw off his follow-up. "You're nothing but an apprentice!"
"An apprentice," Rey shot back, "who's been fighting all her life."
Not to mention one who was simply stronger in the Force than the Inquisitor. Luke Skywalker hadn't been wrong about the potency of her connection. Now she owned it, called upon the Force's power and let it lend her the speed and strength to weather the Second Brother's onslaught. She began to draw upon Ataru's defensive precepts, darting away as often as she parried or turned attacks aside.
"I don't care how long you've been fighting," the Second Brother snapped back. "This should be beyond you. I am beyond you!"
Rey weathered the onslaught. She'd angered her attacker now, good and proper. Now he came back at her, losing his own finesse to impetuous blows that would cut her in half were she not darting around the attacks.
There it was at last, the crack in his defences. His shaken composure made him vulnerable, Rey sensed it like a slackening wind and saw her chance. She let herself slip from the eye of the storm into its vortices and now Shien's concision became the ferocious ballet of Ataru, now her attacks struck home with the kinetic force that Makashi was ill-equipped to withstand and now she felt fear from her enemy.
She didn't relish it, but she seized upon it nonetheless. Her swarm-strikes left his defence ragged, hammering him without cease. But now they drew close to the edge of the roof, the chasm yawning wide at the Second Brother's back, and she saw the peril.
It was there to read in the way he drew back, the cunning grimace that settled over his pale face. And it was there in the way that the Force pulsed darkly around him.
So Rey halted her pursuit. She drew back into herself, bringing her staff back into guard position and holding the urge to attack in check.
It was a move born of caution, but it worked just as perfectly as a taunt. The seconds stretched out, neither combatant moving. Centred in the Living Force, Rey waited, watching the current and how it carried her opponent. Judging the course she would need to take.
Because the deadliest Hawk-Bats were the ones who learned to wait, to judge the moment…
One swing was all it took to doom the Second Brother, and it was his own. He lunged in with a vicious diagonal cut, but Rey deflected it with a Shien parry, whipped her staff around and immediately brought her Ataru to bear.
This time it took only a few heartbeats. She smashed the sword to the side. With the same motion she sprang up into the air, and hammered her boots into the Second Brother's chest. Boom-boom.
He staggered back, tiles sliding under his feet. Then they gave way, and his wordless howl of rage was the only thing that escaped the plummet into the chasm. That, and a terminal crunching sound.
Dun Moch indeed. But it hadn't been the Second Brother's.
Some of his surviving followers had seen him fall. Yells of dismay went up – one of them just swore loudly – followed by the noise of running feet.
"Let 'em run!" came Poe's voice from below, echoed by Finn. "No good chasing, they'll be offworld by sunrise." The two of them came into view, down on a balcony to Rey's left.
"You alright?" called Finn.
Rey nodded, mustering a smile. "Just let me get my breath back and, ah, find some stairs."
"Sure!" Her friends withdrew.
Rey stepped back from the ledge, breathing hard as she extinguished the coils of her staff. She didn't revel in her victory, though she permitted herself the satisfaction of what it meant. One more adherent of the Dark Side gone. And for herself, a test passed.
/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\
The next morning, when the town was secured, Rey sat own once again with Cyn Drallig's holocron in the upper chamber of the temple. She selected one of the later talks, one that was marked for 'clearing one's head.'
It also seemed to be aimed at ensuring that one's head didn't get too big. "Mastery is a state, true," the old Battlemaster said. "Yet the it is also a process, and the process of mastery never truly ends."
Rey meditated, keeping just enough concentration to sink into Drallig's voice and absorb the words. So it was that she sensed Leia coming when the General entered the building. She stilled the holocron and went to meet Leia, finding her halfway up the stairs.
"General, I'm sorry. I hadn't thought."
Leia smiled and waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, nonsense, Rey. You're quite worth climbing a flight of stairs for, especially if you just put paid to the last Inquisitor."
Kaydel was visible at the bottom of the stairs, peering up. She met Rey's eye and smiled, more broadly when Rey winked, and backed out of sight.
"The lieutenant tells me that it was a remarkable thing to witness," Leia said as she reached the top and accepted a helping hand from Rey. "A furious, breathtaking dance."
"Kaydel's… generous." Rey tried to control her blush, and suspected that Leia probably saw it all the same. "I'm sure it didn't live up to anything you saw Luke do."
"You might be surprised." Scanning the room, Leia smiled. "Ah good, the people who built this place did believe in seats. Some temples and monasteries, it's stand or lie down. But no, sensible folk built this one." She moved towards the nearest one. "When the next Jedi Temple is built, Rey, I recommend being generous with seating."
Rey grinned. With most people she'd frown about tempting fate, but with Leia it was a welcome vote of confidence. "Noted."
They sat, and Leia gave Rey an appraising look. "So how are you feeling, Rey?"
"Balanced," Rey said. "There's still an awfully long way to go, with the Forms and everything else. But… I feel like I'm alright with that, overall. I know the direction I need to take, and I'm centred in a way that I wasn't before."
"Often seems to be the way with the Force," Leia smiled. "I think Luke would be rather pleased with you."
"And it's just like he said. The Force is all around us, but it's also in me," Rey said, reliving the memory of Ach-To, her first moment of true understanding.
"Exactly, and most times, the answers you need lie within you. Maz likes to say that's the real strength of the light. It doesn't come easily, and you have to dig right down and open yourself to it…" Now there was a twinkle in Leia's eyes, reminiscent of her brother, when he'd managed to lose his sorrows and just expound on the wonders of the Force. "You'll find strength and wisdom that nothing can match."
"Then it's just a matter of keeping on digging," Rey said.
"Well, not just that." The older woman rested a hand lightly on Rey's shoulder, and got up. "Sometimes it's a matter of coming to greet the people whose despot you just threw down. There's talk of a celebration, and as your general, I'm ordering you to attend. I don't know if Cyn Drallig had views on rewarding progress?"
"None that he's expressed so far."
"Well, I'm a firm believer. And in fact, I'm led to believe that they make very fine wine out here…"
Rey had a long way to go before she could call herself a true master, of saber combat or anything else. If anything, learning what she had only made that clearer. But that was alright. Today, she could relax, just a little.
