The world was barren; nothing but a pile of frigid, black rock, beneath the pale rays of a dying sun. What was once teeming with life was now little more than a graveyard, a place full of death and suffering, a place where the echoes of yesterday’s pain could still be heard on the whispers of the icy wind. It had all happened so quickly: a flash of blinding white light, a deafening silence, and then a crack, so loud and frightening that not even the bravest of souls could help but cower from it. The fire that followed was so deadly hot that the smoke alone turned the writhing tendrils of the living plants to dust, and sent the flesh of every inhabitant into a frenzy of blisters and smoldering ruin. When the flames came, licking at the heels of those who were fleeing for their very lives, there was no escape. Coils of molten orange and gold wound themselves around ankles and wrists, around waists and throats, pulling each and every victim down into a sea of living death, and dragging them into the abyss of no return. Cries of horror and desperation and pleas of mercy faded out to nothing against the roar of the flames, the thunderous growl that was the call of the dead consuming everything and everyone, replacing sound itself with a constant, booming inferno of never-ending dread. It was that inferno that I heard now, ringing in my ears with relentless vigor, the steady beating of the end of life, as I knew it. With each step I took, the crackle of the flames and the drone of a thousand anguished cries grew louder and louder, until I could do nothing more than to beg for my end to come swiftly, to plead with the God Yun-Yuuzhan to take me to the bottomless pit of liquid fire and let me join my crèche mates. By some miracle I survived the massacre of that single day and night, when the night was turned day by the blaze of the flames and the flash of the skies; and the day became night as the black clouds crept after, suffocating the landscape and sheathing everything with their all-consuming darkness. Why I should be free of the bloodshed of those hours I do not know. Only the Gods who have the circle of life in the palm of their hands can know it; but I am alive, breathing and feeling where I should be cold and still, and I am stuck, chained to this forsaken place like a prisoner. Just like my crèche mates before me, I too will soon come to the end of my path. I know it; I can feel it in my bones, aching piously with the weight of everything they have endured from my time in this life. The whispered wind chills ever cooler against my skin as the flames continue to subside, sucking every ounce of goodness from the surrounding environment until the only thing left is me, standing on the edge of a blackened, jagged cliff face, and begging to be free. As my scarred and broken feet crunch over the skeletons of my youth, bowed before me on this sacred rock, I know it is time. I take one last step, one last breath, and then leap. Whatever awaits me in the afterlife, I know I can endure it. If I can endure the pain of living, I can endure anything.
THE_PIED_PIPER posted: Chak is alive!!!!! Yahoo!!