alone he became known as his own name slipped into the recesses of the past along with knowledge of the Republic's most stalwart guardians the Jedi Knights whose extermination extermination he engineered With no one to oppose him he held the entire galaxy under his command Only mortality stood in the way of eternal rule though even that might be overcome if he discovered the ancient secrets It was at the height of his power when all seemed secure that the unforeseen happened happened His own apprentice turned against him throwing him to his death and thereby helping topple his Empire Once there was a boy who was born with an extraordinary extraordinary gift He could hear things see things and do things others could not His mother shared a similar gift as did his uncle but not his father What was special about the boy's gift was that he heard voices from time to time The voices told him secret things and warned him when he was in danger He did as the voices instructed and told no one else about them not his parents or his uncle who trained him to join a new order of Jedi Knights As the boy grew older the voices faded from his dreams until he forgot about them altogether But their influence remained He eventually eventually spurned his uncle's teachings and used his gift not for good but for evil His parents had named him Ben but the name he took for himself was Kylo Ren Once there was a girl who had many dreams One of them was to become a pilot and see the stars In preparation preparation she practiced endlessly on flight simulators and built her own speeders from scavenged parts She also dreamed
of the past She read watched and listened to everything she could about the Jedi of old who had mythic powers that defied belief But as much as she imagined herself flying starships and learned stories of mystical warriors from mysterious mysterious worlds she could not explore the universe beyond the desert planet where she'd been orphaned She had to wait until her parents returned Her name was Rey born of a family she did not know One day events beyond her control forced the girl to leave her desert home She copiloted a famous starship under its celebrated captain who told her that the Jedi and their powers were more than a myth She also discovered discovered that she had the gift to become one of their number if she received the proper training When the last of the Jedi failed to teach her what she needed she turned to another a woman who had received the training but followed a different different vocation So under Leia Organa's tutelage Rey learned the ways of the Jedi
CHAPTER 1 THE JUNGLE WAS ALIVE and Rey was alive with it She darted through the dense brush never stopping never slowing She dipped under half hidden branches and hopped over exposed roots She brushed a webweaver off her shoulder and dodged the flick of a zymond's poisonous tongue When she came upon swampy ground she grabbed a creeper vine and swung over it Her breathing remained steady throughout and she didn't break a sweat despite the humidity Rey might have been a creature of the desert desert accustomed to the sand and sun of Jakku but on Ajan Kloss she moved through the jungle as if she'd lived there her whole life Such was the power of the Force For those who opened themselves up to it even the most foreign environments could become like home As fast as she ran however Rey could not shake off her pursuers They whizzed through the air behind her four combat remotes one blue one white one green and one red targeting her with stingbeams Though she couldn't
sense the robotic devices the same way she could living organisms she was able to track them by discerning how they interacted with their surroundings The chrome of their surfaces made glittering reflections in rainwater puddles puddles The puff of their maneuvering jets quieted the noisy tree chirpers And the beams of their lasers emitted the scorched scent of ozone All these sights sounds and smells clued Rey into the remotes locations so she could stay one step ahead of them and their precisely timed shots She had another pursuer a friendly one who whined while struggling to keep pace Colored orange and white with a domed head and a spherical body the astromech droid BB 8 was designed for starship maintenance and hyperspace navigation not high speed chases through wild jungles The uneven land and thick vegetation made travel challenging for a mechanical being that rolled rather than walked or flew Still using every gadget available to an astromech BB 8 managed to stay within beeping distance Rey had told her little friend to stay back at the base but of course BB 8 had refused The droid was above all else stubbornly loyal But the remotes weren't going to quit because her unwanted helper lagged behind They kept zapping at her while she kept running toward her goal lightsaber lightsaber hilt in hand Their laser beams could inflict a nasty sting as their name implied but Rey wasn't worried so much about the pain as she was about slowing down Every second was precious if she wanted to impress her teacher and achieve a personal best
