Guardians of Light

The Beginning of the End

The world was suffocating. Ash and thick black smoke cloaked the atmosphere and cast the world below into ominous darkness. An Imperial army seeped over the landscape, an assortment of assault droids, soldiers, and Sith, leaving a path of obliteration and chaos in their wake. 

Alderaan was not without defences, but these proved futile against the sheer size of the attacking force that ripped through defending soldiers and burned entire cities to the ground. 

 Despite a Republic victory  under Jace Malcolm, the once tranquil world was now soaked in blood, it's history forever stained by the catastrophic event.

The Great Galactic war raged on between the Sith Empire and the Republic for years to come, leaving planets desolated and civilisations devoured in its wake. Alderaan was only one example, the list of planets that bore the wrath of the war seemingly endless. 

The war had reigned for long enough. New powers were destined to annihilate  both Republic and Sith forces in one simple act of superiority, to cast the galaxy into revolution under the command of a single entity. 

A time of reckoning would soon begin. 

Clarke awoke with a start, wincing as the insistent glow of light seared her eyes painfully. Her body felt slow, sluggish as she brought a hand to her face as a shield against the offending sensation. 

What the hell was going on?

A distant voice echoed into existence, growing louder in volume until an automatic door slid open and the sentence fell away into stunned silence when Bellamy witnessed his friend conscious for the first time in days. 

"You're finally awake!' he breathed, almost unable to believe his eyes. 

Clarke kept her eyes screwed shut as her entire body rejecting the sudden onslaught of sensation, although it was a vague comfort to know that she was safe, despite the major headache that was beginning to form in her skull. 

"We were worried about you," Bellamy continued, a huge smile breaking through his initial surprise when he perched at the foot of her bed. "How do you feel?"

With pain burning in every limb, Clarke let her arm fall back to her side and lifted her head to squint intently at her excitable friend. She felt awful, as if it wasn't obvious.

"What the hell happened?" she muttered, every syllable dragging painfully from her lips as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. 

The room was white, plain and boring, with not even a splash of colour to bring joy to the scene. She was lying on a bed which appeared to be one of the few items existing within the four walls. A small table lay to her left, although its gleaming surface was void of any decoration. 

"What do you remember?" 

Clarke cast her mind back, sorting through the jumble of confused images to identify her most recent memory. She had been with Lexa, in the middle of nowhere for whatever reason. Logical reasoning escaped her tired thoughts and she frowned questioningly at her friend. 

"We traced the Sith ship to Alderaan," Bellamy began, propping himself back on one arm to narrate the story. "But neither you or Lexa were anywhere to be found."

Clarke tensed instantly. Alderaan. She had just dreamt of Alderaan, hadn't she? It couldn't have been a coincidence. 

"That's when a Republic ship arrived and interrupted our search, but I'll get back to that later," Bellamy continued, mentally calculating how to communicate the confusing timeline. "Anyway, for the sake of clarity, it turns out that the local security forces had identified the unapproved landing and taken you into holding. You were unconscious the entire time but they treated you well."