When the windswept crags met the luminuous rays of the dwindling sun, a boistero

us young lad lept out of an unseen fissure - scanning the horizon. His gaze lock
ed upon a shifting silohuette in the distance. It was little more than a pinhead
at that distance, but the distinct colouration clearly distinguished it from th
ose sun-scorched rocks and golden dunes. The boy excited himself, scaling the bl
istering boulders and setting himself into a sprint. He darted to and fro, restr
icting his time in that boiling heat and finding compassion in the slivers of sh
adow cast by benevolent shards of stone. In short time he arrived upon that imag
e in the desert. As the sun began to sink, his vision felt unhindered and he cou
ld clearly make out the object laid out so indignantly upon the sandy slopes. As
he inched near under cover of towering chords of the native kwinchi, he focused
on that form: a vapid, dehydrated body. At last, as the sun fell, weighed down
by encroaching darkness, the boy approached the figure. The body, little more th
an a skeleton covered in sun-burnt skin, was clearly foreign. It featured not id
entifiable markers, none of the blue-green tattoos of the Hylga tribe, with its
serpentine scrawlings. There were no orange carvings, a signant of the Yokan tri
be and a representation of the pain of the sun. The boy searched more thoroughly
, clearing possible clan links with every minute. Not Rakimmi, not Flarro, not R
olaka. In despair, and veiled fear, the boy drew his hood and commited the Yelis
: slitting his palm and coating the sun-stripped skull of the body with his life
's essence. A flash, a momentary burst of overpowering light and pain, and then
darkness. The insight of the dead provided what was needed. After regaining sigh
t, the boy quickly flipped the body, openning a hidden pocket beneath the seams
of the body's ragged cloak. Within, an elliptical strip of chromatic metal. On t
hat strip, the following was embossed: "Etsal Nal Utal". He had found the key, a
nd with it, sealed this planet's fate.