Excerpt: Crucible of Hsskor

Prologue

The sun baked ground echoed with heat even long after the sun had dipped below the horizon. Swirls of sand rose up from his metered footsteps as he pulled the long robe about him, shielding himself from the cold that night would soon bring. A speeder or transport would have made the trip faster but there was something about the Lorpfanian sands against the bottoms of his feet, a tenuous connection to something distant, that made him feel grounded. With chaos so eagerly swirling throughout the sector, he took what comforts he could.
Nightmares of so many years ago still haunted his waking life as well. Claws and blood, as far as his mind's eye could see. War of the most brutal kind had finally broken him, snapped his sanity long enough for his own claws to find purchase in those he knew, those he once called friends. What happened after that, remained little but a blurred memory. That is why he sought the elders, sought the peace of walking through the deserts on errands and deliveries. Cloaked in rags and ignored by all, it meant the voices stayed silent and the dreams were only there when he closed his eyes.
Lifting the leather satchel to shift it to his other shoulder, he sighed at the aches throughout his battered body. Years of wounds ill-dressed and healed poorly left him in pain but he endured; some small part of him remembered his teachings and took solace in his penance. This recollection was shortly interrupted as the sparkle of light drew his sensitive eyes from the dark shadow of the nearby city.
Streaming through the night sky above were what seemed to be a hundred meteors, each blazing brilliantly at they pierced the upper atmosphere. Such a sight was rare, particularly in the later seasons of the year, and it gave him pause. As the glow drew closer, his eyes widened. What poured down from the sky was no debris from a passing comet or asteroid.
Swiftly he dove away from where he stood, diving into the fine sand of the desert as he sought shelter. Within moments of his retreat, hundreds of white-hot fragments slammed into the shallow dunes. Shimmering particles swirled violently up from the impact points, scattering in the shallow breezes to settle more than ten meters away from each newly formed crater. Each fragment seemed larger than the first until, with a thunderous roar, a rounded hunk of some strange ship tore through a half kilometer of the desert before coming to rest against one of the larger dunes.
As the final wreckage, too small to survive re-entry, trickled down like tiny stars, he pulled himself back to his feet. Whatever had happened above him, this craft had obviously been on the losing side of the fight. Without even looking he could tell that no one would have survived the crash. Best to inform the authorities. At least, that is what he thought at first, until he saw the scorched markings on the side of the ship. The sign he had tried to forget, burned into the back of his skull as memories of the Green Star grew vibrant behind his eyes once more.
He fell to the desert floor, clutching the sides of his head. The howls were back and pounded like blood through his ears. Weapons of wood and steel, growls and teeth. They would come from nowhere, like demons from the shadows, and kill. No word spoken and no quarter given. Horrors thought long forgotten now tore through his mind like a wildfire.
The pulse of the forest; the stench of life overgrown. It filled his nostrils though it's source was a million kilometers away. Everything there was death. Vines that choked the life from him, beasts that fed on the flesh of the fallen. They fought, he fought, constantly. Every centimeter, every meter was a struggle just to move. After he had killed one, he could not stop. The blood throbbed through his veins, pulsed behind his eyes with a fury. They'd made sure of that when he signed on.
Everything after was a blur of red and brown. Matted fur clinging to his claws, sticky with blood; but it wasn't enough. His body craved more of it and he was on the rest in a matter of moments. Teeth tearing, claws rending, every muscle moving faster than it should and the fragment of himself behind those eyes mad with rage, just watching it all.
Screaming like a beast possessed, he leapt to his feet and ran with all his strength towards the walls of the city. Though alone, he was pursued by those beasts, the ones who attacked him and the one he became. Years of his life forced down through pain and discipline. None of it could be held back now, not even as his hands fell upon the rough outer wall of the city or as he struggled along it, trying to find some opening or respite from nightmares reborn.
He burst through the outer gates, stumbling along the duracrete walkways he fell against a starlit wall as he dug his claws into his hood. The memories taunted him, lashed at his sanity as he struggled through. Slowly, he wrested some sense from the murky depths of his memories. He forced the trees into grass and back into sand. The howls fell into silence and the blood faded from his gnarled hands. Now there was nothing more than the silence of the city and the shadows dancing in dim starlight.
He clutched his satchel, the datapads within clattering as they shifted. Pulling it tight against his chest he began to move forward, his amber eyes darting left and right in barely restrained panic. What he saw ... what he thought he saw ... He didn't know if he should say anything. No one would believe him anyway, not after what he had returned as. Best to leave it in silence, he thought, best to keep it back in the past. The past couldn't hurt him anymore. The elders told him so.
... but they never said the past would fall from the sky.