Hello everyone. :) So, here's the beginning of the rewrite of To Protect and Defend. Again, apologies to all my readers. I promise I'll try to keep updating this in a timely manner. I have motivation now at least, now that I know people like my stuff. XD
A note on the cover art, I did draw this. =P Ahsoka looks kind of like an anime character, but whatever. This will be the story's permanent cover unless I get an idea for a new one. :)
So without further ado, here is the prologue. :)
Words cannot express how excited I am right now. I apologize to whoever may be reading this if none of this makes sense. I have to get this all down. I'm using one of The Visitor's "computer" things. It's taken me quite some time to get used to it, but I think I can manage now. It really is amazing this thing I'm using here. There's no need to hand write anything out and apparently you can duplicate whatever you're writing as many times as you'd like with absolutely no effort involved. They tried to explain "digital documents" to me, but it's all over my head. I still am having trouble processing the idea that books are rare on Earth because they're so hard to make, and rare on the planet of The Visitors because they're just inconvenient and waste paper. Imagine! So many books that paper is wasted! It's incredible!
But I should start from the beginning.
Six months or so ago this thing fell out of the sky and crashed somewhere near London. Of course everyone was panicking, so the King took an army to investigate. They found these people climbing out of this strange silvery thing. Turns out it hadn't crashed at all, just landed (though it did look like it was crashing.) These people came out of the silvery thing and told the King and his men that they meant us no harm. They said they were from space. Space! Then the King called for the bishop and he and The Visitors spent a good long while arguing about whether or not our planet was the only one in the sky. Then the strangers produced these strange images that we all thought were paintings. The Visitors explained that they weren't. They were called "photographs" and they captured the image of things exactly as they were. Like instant paintings.
This scared everyone and the King had The Visitors thrown into prison. Then he called for all the soothsayers in the kingdom to come and talk to these strangers. That's where I came in. See, I belong to an order of monks. We call ourselves The Order. We're not like Christian monks. We're much more interesting than that. Some of us are warriors. Some of us, like me, are soothsayers who see the future. Some of us are healers. We all have one thing in common though. We can all manipulate this invisible force that is invisible to many people here. It's in and around everything on this planet, but only people like us can see that. We can lift things, see the future, heal injuries, jump higher and move faster than other people, perceive moves before people make them. With all that power, you would think we'd be tyrants, but we hold ourselves to a strict moral code. We live in poverty and use our powers only for good.
This isn't a rare thing, either. We've found that many people have the potential to do what we do. We welcome the strongest into our ranks and try to educate the weaker of our kind. We can't have anyone using his or her powers for evil, though it does happen sometimes.
The King summoned me and the other soothsayers to talk to The Visitors. It was a very interesting session. The Grand Master explored the minds of The Visitors and found that what they said was all true and that their intentions were pure. The Visitors were fascinated by what we could do. We gave them a small demonstration of our powers at their request. That's when they revealed their reason for coming here.
They're looking for help. They say their planet, Coruscant, is under attack. Their silvery thing (A "space ship" is what they call it) is the first of its kind and The Visitors used it to try and find other planets with people willing to help them. Their navigation computer and a thing they call a hyper drive are still very inaccurate, though, and they went further than they planned to. They asked us if we would help them. It took two months of deliberation, but we finally said yes.
So here I am, on their space ship, writing all this out for future generations. Generations that will be born on this planet, Coruscant, because The Visitors have informed us that we may never go back home. I'm all right with that, though. I had no family left back on Earth. I see this as an opportunity. I know there may be a bloody war ahead of us, but I'm hopefully that I can survive. Their planet has seen nothing like us before. We certainly have the element of surprise.
If I survive and have the time, I will write more, but now I must prepare for battle. We are arriving on the planet. I pray for my deliverance and the deliverance of the people we have now sworn to protect.