The Living Man (An SW Fan Fic)

[Jedi_Monk]

Okay, I know this is gonna get moved, but I know not many people go to the fan fiction boards, so I just wanted to advertise this a little bit. I wrote this last night in about an hour. I'd really appreciate any feedback at all! And if you like this story, please check out the other one I've posted The Ancients.

 

The Living Man

 

Once this had been a luscious field, a crop that had held the hopes of a season for a simple farmer named Nharees. The grain had stretched on for as far as the eye could see, waving and shimmering like the ocean tide at sunset when the wind rose, stalks rustling against one another like a whisper caught in a hallway--the words were indistinguishable, but the tone of voice carried.

 

Now Nharees' crops were flattened by the tread of feet and the weight of falling bodies, and the golden hues were now stained red. It had rained in the day, and the blood of men had watered the fields. Now, a field of corpses stretched as far as the eye could see, and not a creature, sentient or insentient, whispered. All was still, this night, all was quiet and all was white in the ethereal glow of the two full moons, Jhanos and Jhuan.

 

Nharees had been gone long before, with his wife and daughter--gone away to the cities to the south where the war had not yet reached. Everyone who had lived and tended the farming belt of Haros had left, and last month had seen a river of disillusioned farmers and farmers' hands marching down the road south, carrying on their backs all that they could carry of their former lives. For the war had been seen from afar, the war between the neighboring countries of Faros and Earos, and nobody wanted to be caught in the vice between those two powerful states.

 

Nharees would not harvest this year, and there would have been precious little to reap had he stayed behind. But a harvest of another kind had begun, even as thick clouds obscured Jhuan and moved, white-rimmed, toward his sister moon. The man was little more than a shadow, even under Jhanos' waning light. His footsteps were silent, but his long robe trailed over dead bodies and smeared the blood that covered them, so a ghost this mysterious creature was not.

 

Jhanos was overtaken, and shadows cloaked the land, and the living man continued his silent march through the field of death.

 

The living man stopped in the midst of Nharees' downtrodden crop, surrounded by the dead of Faros and Earos, soldiers whose blastarmor differed, but whose species was a shared heritage. They were of the same race, and all had pale blue skin and large black eyes, small mouths rimmed by full lips, and three webbed crests standing--or broken--on their heads.

 

The native people called their world Ghaos, but outside, this world was unknown. Republic prospectors had not yet discovered it or its people, and the inhabitants of Ghaos, in turn, had had no contact with the outside galaxy, had not even invented spacetravel. They thought that this, their world, was all that there was, and several states fought, in this age, to claim it all. Such a small-minded people.

 

But the living man had found them, had been drawn to Ghaos by the cries of pain, the wails of torment of falling soldiers.

 

The living man drew back the hood of his cloak--his face was stark white in the dark, and etched with tattoos that accented the planes of his face. He was not of this world; he was an outsider, an alien to the Ghaos. A human being.

 

In a break in the clouds, Jhuan shone through and his pale light reflected red on the stone ornamenting a golden bracer that was strapped upon his right forearm. Then, Jhuan vanished once more, and the wind picked up. The clothes on the dead stirred, and the cloak upon the living man flapped unheeded around his body. He raised his hands, spoke words in the ancient tongue of the Korribani: "Astur, rantasi durrin. Khalos, soondai kandoos!" And with each word, a fire more and more kindled in the ornament stone--at first, a faint ember which smoldered and flared and fed on the words of the spell.

 

The words rose to the sky, and the sky replied with a jagged slash of lightning that revealed the carnage of war in stark detail. "Khalos, soondai kandoos!" The ornament stone roared like a blaze, and gave light enough to illuminate the Sith sorcerer and the dead surrounding in the hues of blood.

 

"Khalos, soondai kandoos!" the sorcerer cried, jabbing his right fist toward the sky. Summoned forth by the irresistible Sith magick, the stormclouds gave up a bolt of lightning to the sorcerer, and struck his ornament stone. The red light spread across the field of battle, and lit it as though a red sun had risen.

 

And the dead screamed.

 

The light retreated into the ornament stone, and the sorcerer, bearing on it the souls of the fallen. And the sorcerer stood like a statue, a monument to death, on the field, his arm still upraised. His chest heaved with exertion, and his eyes glittering red, like the fire of the now dead ornament stone, with power reflected from within.

 

A time passed, marked only by the procession of the clouds, and then at last, the Lord of Death lowered his arm, raised his hood and walked away, fed and glutted on the essence of the dead.

 

Fin.

 

[nova_wolf]

Brilliant work...

 

Posting to say that, and comend your posting it to begin with...

 

Keep it going!