Hey guys, this is the begining of a Star Wars fanfic I have written. I have no idea when I'll get around to continuing it, but I promise it will not take more then a month (lol) As my first fanfic, I hope you guys will not be too punishing in your reviews. =)

I dedicate this to Bryan Potts, for showing me how nice it is to be nice.

Prologue: Blood in the Sand

Sand clogged my throat. Sand, and blood. I tried to spit out the offending substances from my partially supine position. The elbows that attempted to hold my upper body up trembled. My body screamed for rest, it shouted for release, it prayed for death. How hard it is to resist that which your body wants.

But I wouldn't give up, I couldn't. If I failed, that was it. There was no one else. It was up to me, it had always been up to me. If I had seen that sooner…

But such somber thoughts weren't constructive, I picked my head up and opened my eyes. One was swollen, I could tell it, so I could barely even see out of it. The first thing my failing eyes noticed were the boots. Boots as black as night, with iron rings that hung in a vertical pattern down each side. The man bent his knees enough so his face was visible. My blurry vision unable to make out the features my brain had learned to memorize through hate. All I could tell was that he was smirking. There he stood, amidst the greatest battle in a thousand years, and yet he still felt the need to laugh at my fate. How little had changed in this, one of the most turbulent periods of galactic history.

In anger I sent a jab at him with the Force, a futile attempt that even I knew was pointless. My enemy flicked it aside lazily, not even fully moving his shoulder to brush off the weak blast. The road had ended for me, all the work, the training, the learning, the hoping and the dreaming had amounted to this. Blood in the sand.

My hearing had been the first to go, the screaming of my allies no longer heard due to my damaged eardrums. How slightly he moved his hand, barley even making the chocking motion that was guiding the Force to cut the supply of oxygen traveling to my air pipe. My elbows gave way, allowing my face to smash into the sandy plateau our battle had brought us.

Time slowed, so this is the place I thought, this is where I was to die. This is where the last hope of humanity ended. In a fallen man.

Then my sense of touch numbed, and finally my sight tunneled. My whole world consisted of the blurred sight of a man who would be my murderer. I thought of my life, and the man who was attempting to smother it.

Red hot anger swelled up in my belly. And then a voice from long ago urged me to use the emotion to my advantage. My sight changed again, it looked as though I stared through a red film.

I thought about the day my life changed, a change that was fated to bring me to this spot, on this day, to this end.

And I got an idea.

One I never would have even considered had I not been in the predicament I was in now.