Below is my newest fic in progress - I am writing a couple aside this one so I may post those as and when they are finished, though i'm pretty sure they'll be rated over PG, so don't count on it ;)

I have also posted my newest addition to my gallery, as it somewhat pertains to this fic in Subject matter.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm sure this is overkill, most people have read the NJO by now, but if you have not, or have not completed the NJO, this fic contains material that gives away the ending to 'The Unifying Force'
You have been warned! :p




As I Die.

Prologue:

Domain Skell Worldship, 45 years ago.

"Above all else, what is it that you must always remember, what is it that is essential?"

The sound of the aging prefect?s voice echoed out almost as delicately as the sound of dry autumnal leaves strewn on the wind. From the smallest of crechelings ears, to those of the creche attendants, now gathered at the back of the chamber, all listened and waited for the one who would be brave enough to speak and answer the prefect's question. This was not a task to be handled lightly, for punishments awaited wrong conclusions and at this stage of Yuuzhan Vong education, one had not learned to fully embrace pain.

With it's high-vaulted ceiling and it's richly luminescent fungi-lined walls, that seemed to stretch out into the far-spun outer ganglia of the worldship, one could be forgiven for mistaking this location for something more than a domain creche.

Herein sat the rejects of the fellow castes, deemed too inept at Priestly, Shaper or Warrior duties, they had been given a last chance at life among the true caste, as intendants. Of course the intendant caste still contained those born of this life, and as such, many looked down upon those adopted by the castes' many creches as little more than obstacles in the way of their individual destinies. Many high prefects would have argued that this was healthy, this was the mainstay of Yuuzhan Vong life. Certainly they could not have argued that the caste was rife with political rivalry and deception through backstabbing - it was expected.

The crechlings themselves were of mixed domain, displaying their symbols of true caste domains upon their foreheads, but the worldship it's self - or this sector at least - belonged to domain Skell. Also here, concealed behind opaque membranous entranceways, were also the crechlings of domain Anor.

The tall, particularly lanky prefect - of domain Skell himself - drew himself up to his full and imposing height, obsidian eyes scanning above the heads of the attentive young audience who seemed to be bathing sublimely in their own silence. That was until, one such crecheling shot to their feet with an ungainly enthusiasm.

He was small in comparison to many of his peers - which, the prefect noted, would have been all it took for the shapers responsible for birthing him, to have had him sent back to the gods soon after, had that been his son - His crooked half-nose already broken, several times, out of it?s true alignment. The crecheling's pale-blue eyes shone with a curious keenness only a crecheling could display.

So full of prospects were those of his age, so full of naivety that could ultimately see them brought to ruin, before the very ceremony that was supposed to herald their ascension into full Yuuzhan Vong society.

"Speak, Nom Anor." The Prefect rasped with a certain lethargic tang, clearly anticipating this one's answers before the young Yuuzhan Vong had so much as drawn breath to speak.

Keeping the wall behind the Prefect fixed in his sights - he would never have dared look this superior in the eye unless bade to do so - Nom Anor's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and he stuck out his chest, chin raised with a rather arrogant pride.

"To do what you must by any means, in order to achieve what is most beneficial to your domain, Prefect Q'an Skell, to pray that Yun-Harla is with you on such matters, for she delights in such trickery."

The Prefect's shoulders visibly sagged, as though someone had sucked all the life from him mid-sigh. Yet despite his clearly exasperated demeanour, Q'an Skell found reason to respond.

"You above all others, Nom Anor, should know better than to speak for the gods. Need I remind you, that your absence during the required blood sacrifice a ket ago, was duly noted?"

Nom Anor remained in stark silence, knowing interrupting this little speech would be permanently detrimental to his health.

"Nor indeed how displeased Master Shaper Hehsta Phaath was to find you among her initiates? I think not - now, explain your prior answer."

So you can formulate a way to discredit my words and prove me wrong, Nom Anor thought in quick, inward response.

He replied quickly, knowing a pause would only insight the Prefect's anger more so.

"By bringing glory to yourse - your domain, surely you bring glory to the gods also? The more you survive, the more you succeed, better the amount of glory that is heaped upon them."

"Or yourself!"

Another voice called out from across the chamber, Nom Anor turned as if to sneer in their direction, but his eye caught the glance of the Prefect once more and he refrained from acting. It was wise, he already walked a fine line here.

The youth fell back into an uneasy silence, and watched as the Prefect peeled back his lips in a manner that displayed his rotting teeth - full of festering cavities - with disdain.

"You, are your domain's most abhorrent failure"

His words cut the silence like a coufee through vulnerable flesh. And nearby, Nom Anor heard his creche mates stifle their laughter, humiliation was quite the public spectacle aboard the worldships of the Yuuzhan Vong, even in the creche.

"Your life is the gods? to do with as they wish, they care nothing for the ambitions of your or your domain, which you disgrace with such a statement!"

The prefect's hand grasped at thin air, forming a fist as he did so, a fist he brought crashing down upon the coral plinth behind which he stood. Coral shards flaked off it's underside, shattering into smaller, ornate pieces when they hit the ground. No one flinched, no one would have dared.

"Continue to only follow your own ambitions, Nom Anor, and you will be lead to your ruin! Then we all truly see how Yun-Harla delights in such deception, she has deceived you all along."



Chapter1:

Supreme Overlord Shimrra's personal vessel, present day.


Nom Anor's mind whirled furiously, caught up in a never-ending cycle of denial and disbelief, all of this merged into a cataclysmic miasma of pain and new found sense of fear. His legs had buckled beneath his weight, only seconds after he'd shoved Han Solo into the only remaining escape craft contained in the vessel within which he slumped. Solo's family, too, were already safely within the escape vessel, only he remained here now. Here the former false-prophet, former prefect and soon to be deceased Yuuzhan Vong, had sat since - here in the centre of the small grotto aboard Shimrra's dying craft.

He too, would soon be dead along with it, he thought, the idea causing the cauterized stump of his wrist, where his hand had been severed by the burning light-weapon of Leia Organa-Solo, to throb uncontrollably.

Nom Anor had never subscribed to the same endoctrine of pain and agonistic suffering so devoutly adhered to by most of his species. More so, he had payed only lip service to the gods when it served his own self-centered needs best, of course it would never have looked that way to his peers, not if he was adept at disguising his true intentions anyway.

Now however, the former prefect realized where he had erred, and for the first time in a long time, he feared the gods. Who had been less faithful, least devotional in their offerings to them than Nom Anor? Who had used the fanaticism and blind devotion of countless numbers of his peers and superiors, against them?

He had only himself left to blame.

It had been a day of ineffable truths, a day of revelations no less. He had witnessed his own fictitious prophecy come to life, his tale to the masses of heretical shamed ones who hung off his every word as the prophet Yu'shaa. And yet he would never be able to reap the fruits of his labour.

Shimrra was dead, one of his many goals, yet here he sat as lifeless as a sack of dusty, dry bones, when in reality he should have been celebrating - he should have taken Han Solo's offer to join them aboard the Yorik-Trema, out-smarted their overwhelmingly irritating family, and sought himself a new life in secret!

But Nom Anor knew, he'd meant every word he'd said to the Solo's before sending them on their way, that life in this galaxy held no place for him, whichever side he was on. He had been a masked one - just as Yun-Harla was cloaked in borrowed skin - from the very beginning.

Just like that hideously twisted familiar, Onimi.

Everything had been for Nom Anor?s personal gain and where had it lead him but to his own end?
The prefect was correct - He mused inwardly, mind long since numbed by the ever-present and ominous agony assaulting his arm.

Should he not feel something? There was no emotion, just a cold, frosty pit of darkness that had replaced what conscience he may have once possessed. It had latched onto him early, like a hungry biot, wrapping it's blood-thirsty, sinuous tendrils around his soul, then proceeded to slowly bleed him dry.

What is the point?

He, like Shimrra, left no legacy, no heir with which to leave his life's work. He had never wanted anyone else, needed anyone but himself - nor had he ever loved anyone, though some may have supposed he loved himself more than even his own ambitions.
Were they laughing at him now? Looking in from the afterlife, relishing his inner, quiescent anguish?

Perhaps he had once felt something for Niiriit Esh - the ex-warrior who had been the only one to initially accept him as part of their secretive group of heretics, during his exile.
She had possessed some mildly admirable qualities, enough for him to have spent the night with her - but he had not cared enough to go back and attempt to confront those that had slain her in cold blood. No, he'd fled into the night along with the coward, Kunra, trailed by a ravenous hunting party of warriors, sent by Shimrra, to root out and kill the heretics.

What would Niiriit say; should there be an afterlife meeting? No doubt no more than he deserved, and he was uncertain he cared enough to know that either.

"Is this what it is like to be broken?"

The words slipped from his tongue like little more than a breath, dry and hoarse, a pure whisper of what it had once been - this too, fragile and near dead.

Nom Anor cast a self-pitying gaze toward his severed hand, discarded by Jaina Solo, nearest the exit membrane through which the Solo/Skywalker clans had departed.

"Broken in form, perhaps." He grumbled in answerance.

Limbs could be replaced, but they were nothing without a life to control them. It was all a case of delicate symbiosis, something the infidels would never understand.
And then it struck him, flooding his mind with a flurry of thoughts as acutely painful and sobering, as the agony from his injuries. Han Solo's words to him earlier, how could he have overlooked this option?!

Hauling himself to his feet, his fatigued joints and muscles aching in protest, the intendant rose and scuttled back the way he had come only moments before - his new goal would give him the focus he needed to survive this.
Once more, he thought, the sun had not yet set on the fortunes of Nom Anor.

TBC