Let the Light In

Chapter 74: Resolve

Chapter 74: Resolve

There was very little that ran through Rey's mind as she carved her path towards what she could only hope was the correct room. She knew it wasn't necessarily right, to find this odd quiet and soothing rhythm in the chaos she had plunged herself into. The fact was, it was simply far too comfortable for her. Rey's entire life to this point had been a fight for survival, stumbling and falling, just barely getting back up. An Elite troop held up by her hand and choked of all life through the Force was as familiar as those nights spent in wakening agony after yet another day without food on Jakku, and meeting the morning once more with unsteady feet. A Vong footmen carved in two was little more than the beatings she had endured as a child for not bringing in enough scrap, underperforming, unable to do more. She had been on the back foot, once upon a time, but that time was long since over. Now, it was her turn, and she was courting the Force as if she had always had been. Rey was dancing, and her saber was her partner.

Rey was her own show of righteous anger, unwilling for this one last thing to be taken from her. She moved through Snoke's forces at a whirlwind pace. A faint to the right, and a clip to left sent shards and sparks flying as her saber dug deeply into the stone corridor walls of the old temple, with the dust clouds only barely masking the rancid smell of burning flesh as her opponents fell before her. As with anything, however, she did not proceed unscathed. Vibroblades nipped at her arms and legs, whilst a staff punched her gut and took her breath away. But Rey kept her focus, as she knew she did not have time to waste. Hampering her pace would mean more time that Ben would spend alone with Snoke, and a wider margin of failure when the odds were already so largely stacked against them. She bore the blows with a snarled grin that must have looked manic, what with the blood streaming down her face from a cut across her cheeks that caught the bridge of her nose. She was sure it would hurt later, but for now she felt nothing but determination.

Eventually the bodies thinned, her saber found fewer targets, her body endured fewer strikes, and Rey burst forward into the large chamber that all these lower passages lead to. She was alone in a crypt. It was a dark, suffocating place with a high ceiling and ornamental carved pillars lining the walls. The air was heavy with ancient dust, and if not for the bodies behind Rey, one would never be able to tell that anyone had ever been in here. There was nothing else in the room bar an odd-looking waist-height form right in the centre. It was a solid structure, seemingly carved from the same stone at the rest of the room, but grew into a curved panel that bore inlaid symbols. Cautiously, Rey approached the panel and took a closer look. Most of the symbols were unfamiliar to her, but one stood out from the jumbled mess that did stoke her memory. She had seen it before during her time on Jakku, when she'd stumbled upon one of the more ancient ships buried in the sand and unearthed by the fallen Destroyers. Back then, the symbol had been on more electronic displays, and more often than not on terminals that had their guts exposed after their parts were scavenged. Could this strange stone panel be a terminal?

Rey jumped when what sounded like faraway thunder pierced the silence, and the room shook, showering her in dust. She had to get a move on, and prayed that she was in the right place to disable that weapon. She had a hunch that the thunder and quake was yet another ship being torn from the sky and forced to the ground.

With a huff of sudden nerves, Rey ran her hand along the panel to clear the dust, but froze when a faint buzz came from the panel. Rey knew that sound, it was the sound that on Jakku meant meals were finally on the menu. That was circuitry coming to life. Rey bent closer to the machine, not quite knowing what to look for, but resolving to at least render it to dust just in case it had anything to do with the weapon.

A flash of blinding blue and a loud, guttural voice caused Rey to fall back on the stone with shock, her saber drawn above her to fend off her attacker. When the residual light cleared from her vision, however, she found her saber threatening a hologram.